CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 BOUGHT WITH THE INCX>J.fE 
 OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT 
 FUND GIVEN IN 1891 BY 
 
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Cornell University Library 
 DG 209.G81 1906 
 
 History of Rome : 
 
 3 1924 028 284 663 
 
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 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
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 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028284663 
 
A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 FROM THE TRIBUNATE OF TIBERIUS GRACCHUS TO 
 
 THE END OF THE JUGURTHINE WAR 
 
 B.C. 133—104 
 
 BY 
 
 A. H. J. GREENIDGE, MA., D.Litt. 
 
 LATE TUTOR AND FELLOW OF HERTFORD COLLEGE AND LECTURER IN ANCIENT HISTORY AT 
 BRASENOSE COLLEGE, OXFORD 
 
 With two maps 
 
 METHUEN & CO. 
 
 36 ESSEX STREET W.C. 
 
 LONDON 
 
Mrst Published in 1904 
 
TO 
 
 B. G. 
 
 AND 
 
 T. G. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 This work will be comprised in six volumes. According to the plan 
 ifhich I have provisionally laid down, the second volume will cover 
 he period from 104< to 70 b.c, ending with the first consulship of 
 *ompeius and Crassus ; the third, the period from 70 to 44 b.c, 
 losing with the death of Caesar ; the fourth volume will probably 
 )e occupied by the Third Civil War and the rule of Augustus, while 
 he fifth and sixth will cover the reigns of the Emperors to the 
 iccession of Vespasian. 
 
 The original sources, on which the greater part of the contents 
 if the present volume is based, have been collected during the last 
 ew years by Miss Clay and myself, and have already been published 
 n an abbreviated form. Some idea of the debt which I owe to 
 Qodem authors may be gathered from the references in the foot- 
 lotes. As I have often, for the sake of brevity, cited the works of 
 hese authors by shortened and incomplete titles, I have thought it 
 .dvisable to add to the volume a list of the full titles of the works 
 eferred to. But the list makes no pretence to be a full biblio- 
 ;raphy of the period of history with which this volume deals. The 
 oap of the Wad Mellag and its surrounding territory, which I have 
 riserted to illustrate the probable site of the battle of the Muthul, 
 3 taken from the map of the " Medjerda superieure " which appears 
 a M. Salomon Reinach's Atlas de la Province Romaine d^Afrique. 
 
 I am very much indebted to my friend and former pupil, Mr. 
 5. J. Harding, of Hertford College, for the ungrudging labour which 
 e has bestowed on the proofs of the whole of this volume. Many 
 nprovements in the form of the work are due to his perspicacity 
 nd judgment. 
 
viii PREFACE 
 
 A problem which confronts an author who plunges into thi 
 midst of the history of a nation (however complete may be th( 
 unity of the period with which he deals) is that of the amount o 
 introductory information which he feels bound to supply to hii 
 readers. In this case, I have felt neither obligation nor inclinatior 
 to supply a sketch of the development of Rome or her constitutior 
 up to the period of the Gracchi. The amount of information or 
 the general and political history of Rome which the average studeni 
 must have acquired from any of the excellent text-books now ir 
 use, is quite sufficient to enable him to understand the technicalities 
 of the politics of the period with which I deal ; and I was ver} 
 unwilling to burden the volume with a prdcis of a subject which 1 
 had already treated in another work. On the other hand, it is nol 
 so easy to acquire information on the social and economic historj 
 of Rome, and consequently I have devoted the first hundred pages 
 of this book to a detailed exposition of the conditions preceding 
 and determining the gi-eat conflict of interests with which oui 
 story opens. 
 
 A. H. J. G. 
 
 Oxford, 
 August, 1904 
 
 NOTE 
 
 This volume, intended as the first of a series, is now left by the 
 lamented death of its Author as an isolated unit. Dr. Greenidge 
 has not left behind him sufficient material to justify the continuance 
 of the work by the hand of an Editor. Notwithstanding this un- 
 happy curtailment of the original scheme, the Publishers believe 
 that this volume, comprising as it does a strongly marked epoch of 
 Roman History, is well able to stand alone, and to serve as a valu- 
 able contribution to the story of the later Republic. 
 
 August, 1906 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 {The references are to the pages) 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 Characteristics of the period, i. Recent changes in the conditions of Roman 
 life, 2. Close of the period of expansion by means of colonies or land 
 assignments, 3. Reasons for social discontent, 10. The life of the wealthier 
 classes, 11. The expenses of political life, 23. Attempts to check luxury, 27. 
 Motives for gain amongst the upper classes, 31. Means of acquiring wealth 
 open to members of the nobility, 32 ; those open to members of the com- 
 mercial class, 41. The political influence of the Equites, 47. The business life 
 of Rome ; finance and banking, 49. Foreign trade, 53. The condition of the 
 small traders, 55. Agriculture, 58. Diminution in the numbers of peasant pro- 
 prietors, 59. The Latifundium and the new agricultural ideal, 64. Growth 
 of pasturage, 66. Causes of the changes in the tenure of land, 6g. The system 
 of possession, 73. Future prospects of agriculture, 78. Slave labour, 81 ; dangers 
 attending its employment ; revolts of slaves in Italy, 86. The servile war in 
 Sicily (circa 140-131 B.C.), 8g. The need for reform, gg. 
 
 CHAPTER n 
 
 The sources from which reform might have come, 100. Attitude of Scipio 
 Aemilianus, 102. Tiberius Gracchus; his youth and early career, 103. 
 The affair of the Numantine Treaty, 108. Motives that urged Tiberius 
 Gracchus to reform, log. His tribunate (b.c. 133), no. Terms of the agrarian 
 meastue which he introduced, in. Creation of a special agrarian commission, 
 116. Opposition to the bill, 117. Veto pronounced by Marcus Octavius, 120. 
 Tiberius Gracchus declares a Justitium, 121. Fruitless reference to the senate, 
 122. Deposition of Octavius, 125, Passing of the agrarian law ; appointment 
 of the commissioners ; judicial power given to the commissioners, 127. Em- 
 ployment of the bequest of Attalus, I2g. Attacks on Tiberius Gracchus, 130. 
 His defence of the deposition of Octavius, 132. New programme of Tiberius 
 Gracchus ; suggestion of measures dealing with the army, the law-courts and 
 the Italians, 134. Tiberius Gracchus's attempt at re-election to the tribunate, 
 137. Riot at the election and death of Tiberius Gracchus, 139. Consequences 
 of his fall, 143. 
 
Does the Eagle know what is in the pit ? 
 
 Or wilt thou go ask the Mole ? 
 Can Wisdom be put in a silver rod ? 
 
 Or Love in a golden bowl ? 
 
 Blake 
 
A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE period of lioman history on which we now enter is, like so 
 many that had preceded it, a period of revolt, directly aimed 
 against the existing conditions of society and, through the 
 neans taken to satisfy the fresh wants and to alleviate the suddenly 
 •ealised, if not suddenly created, miseries of the time, indirectly 
 iffecting the structure of the body politic. The difference between 
 ;he social movement of the present and that of the past may be 
 ustly described as one of degree, in so far as there was not a single 
 ilement of discontent visible in the revolution commencing with 
 ;he Gracchi and ending with Caesar that had not been present in 
 ;he earlier epochs of social and political agitation. \The burden 
 )f military service, the curse of debt, the poverty of an agrarian 
 proletariate, the hunger for land, the striving of the artisan and 
 ;he merchant after better conditions of labour and of trade — the 
 ;eparate cries of discontent that find their unison in a protest 
 igainst the monopoly of office and the narrow or selfish rule of a 
 lominant class, and thus gain a significance as much political as 
 locial — 9,11 these plaints had filled the air at the time when Caius 
 Licinius near the middle of the fourth century, and Appius Claudius 
 it its close, evolved their projects of reform. The cycle of a 
 lation's history can indeed never be broken as long as the character 
 )f the nation remains the same. And the average Roman of the 
 niddle of the second century before our era ^ was in all essential parti- 
 ;ulars the Roman of the times of Appius and of Licinius, or even of 
 ;he epoch when the ten commissioners had published the Tables 
 vhich were to stamp its perpetual character on Roman law. He 
 vas in his business relations either oppressor or oppressed, either 
 lammer or anvil. In his private life he was an individualist whose 
 
 ' The average, or at least the most powerful, type of a race is stamped on its 
 listory. It is perliaps needless to say that no generalisations on character apply 
 o all its individual members. 
 1 
 
X CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 Attitude of the senate after the fall of Tiberius Gracchus, 145. Special commisi 
 appointed for the trial of his adherents (b.c. 132), 146. Fate of Scipio Nas 
 147. Permanence of the land commission and thoroughness of its work, 
 Difficulties connected with jurisdiction on disputed claims, 150. The Itali 
 appeal to Scipio Aemilianus, 154. His intervention ; judicial power taken f 
 the commissioners (b.c. 129), 157. Death of Scipio Aemilianus, 159. Tribui 
 of Carbo (B.C. 131) ; ballot law and attempt to make the tribune immedia 
 re-eligible, 163. The Italian claims; negotiations for the extension of 
 franchise, 165. Alien act of Pennus (b.c. 126), 166. Proposal made by Flac 
 to extend the franchise (b.c. 125), 167. Revolt of Fregellae, 170. Foundat 
 of Fabrateria (b.c. 124), 171. Foreign events during this period ; the kingc 
 of Pergamon, 172. Bequest of Attalus the Third (e.g. 133), 175. Revolt 
 Aristonicus (b.c. 132-130), 177. Organisation of the province of Asia (b.c. i 
 126), 183. Sardinian War (b.c 126-125), 188. Conquest and annexation of 
 Balearic Islands (b.c 123-122), 188. 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 The political situation at the time of the appearance of Caius Gracchus a 
 candidate for the tribunate (e.g. 124), igo. Early career of Caius Grace! 
 igi. First tribunate of Caius Gracchus (e.g. 123), 199. Laws passed or ] 
 posed during this tribunate ; law protecting the Caput of a Roman citizen, i 
 Impeachment of Popillius, 201. Law concerning magistrates who had b 
 deposed by the people, 202. Social reforms, 203. Law providing for 
 cheapened sale of corn, 205. Law mitigating the conditions of military serv 
 208. Agrarian law, 209. Judiciary law, 210. Law permitting a crim: 
 prosecution for corrupt judgments, 216. Law concerning the province of A 
 218. The new balance of power created by these laws in favour of the Equi 
 221. Law about the consular provinces, 222. Colonial schemes of Ci 
 Gracchus, 224. The Rubrian law for the renewal of Carthage, 227. Law 
 the making of roads, 228. Election of Fannius to the consulship and of d 
 Gracchus and Flaccus to the tribunate, 230. Activity of Caius Grace 
 during his second tribunate (e.g. 122), 231. The franchise bill, 233. Opposit 
 to the bill, 235. Exclusion of Italians from Rome ; threat of the veto, 
 suspension of the measure, 236. Proposal for a change in the order of vol 
 in the Coraitia Centuriata, 237. New policy of the senate ; counter-legislal 
 of Drusus, 238. Colonial proposals of Drusus, 240. His measure for the ] 
 tection of the Latins, 242. The close of Caius Gracchus's second tribun 
 243. His failure to be elected tribune for the third time, 247. Proposal for 
 repeal of the Rubrian law, 248. The meeting on the Capitol and its c 
 sequences (e.g. izi), 249. Declaration of a state of siege, 251. The seizun 
 the Aventine ; defeat of the Gracchans ; death of Caius Gracchus and Flaci 
 253. Judicial prosecution of the adherents of Caius Gracchus, 257. Ful 
 judgments on the Gracchi, 259. The closing years of Cornelia, 260. Estin 
 of the character and consequences of the Gracchan reforms, 261. 
 
CONTENTS xi 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 The political situation after the fall of Caius Gracchus, 277. Prosecution and 
 acquittal of Opimius (b.c. 120), 278. Publius Lentulus dies in exile, 280. Pro- 
 secution and condemnation of Carbo (b.c. ng), 281. Lucius Crassus, 282. 
 Policy of the senate towards the late schemes of reform, 283. Two new land 
 laws {circa 121-119 B.C.), 285. The settlement of the land question with 
 respect to Ager Publicus in Italy (b.c. hi), 288. Limitations on the power of 
 the nobility; the Equestrian courts; trials of Scaevola (b.c. 120) and Cato 
 (e.g. 113), 295. Consulship of Scaurus (b.c. 115) ; law concerning the voting 
 power of freedmen, 296. Sumptuary law; activity of the censors Metellus and 
 Domitius (e.g. 115), 297. Triumphs of Domitius, Fabius (b.c. 120) and Scaurus 
 (e.g. 115), for military successes, 298. Confidence of the electors in the 
 ancient houses, 298. Recognition of talent by the nobility; career of Scaurus 
 (b.g. 163-115), 298. The rise of Marius; his early career (b.c 157-119), 301. 
 Tribunate of Marius (b.c. 119), 303. His law about the method of voting in 
 the Comitia carried in spite of the opposition of the senate, 304. He opposes 
 a measure for the distribution of corn, 306. Marius elected praetor ; accused 
 and acquitted of Ambitus (e.g. 116), 306. His praetorship (b.g. 115), and pro- 
 praetorship in Spain (b.c 114), 304. Further opposition to the senate ; founda- 
 tion of Narbo Martins (b.c 118), 308. Glaucia; his tribunate and his law of 
 extortion (ceVco III B.C.), 309. The spirit of unrest; religious fears at Rome (b.g. 
 114), 311. First trial of the vestals (b.g. 114), 312. Second trial of the vestals 
 (e.g. 113), 313. Human sacrifice, 314. Great fire at Rome (b.g. hi), 314. 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 The kingdom of Numidia, 315. The races of North Africa, 317. The Numidians, 
 318. The Numidian monarchy, 320. Reign of Micipsa (b.c 148-118), 323. 
 Early years of Jugurtha, 323. Jugurtha at Numantia (b.c 134-133), 324. Joint 
 rule of Jugurtha, Adherbal and Hiempsal (b.c 118), 326. Murder of Hiempsal 
 {circa 116 b.c) ; war between Jugurtha and Adherbal, 328. Both kings send 
 envoys to Rome; the appeal of Adherbal, 329. Decision of the senate, 331. 
 Numidia divided between the claimants, 333. Renewal of the war between 
 Jugurtha and Adherbal {circa 114 b.c), 334. Siege of Cirta (b.c 112), 335. 
 Embassy firom Rome neglected by Jugurtha, 337. Renewed appeal of Adherbal, 
 339. Another commission sent by Rome, 340. Surrender of Cirta and murder 
 of Adherbal, 343. Massacre of Italian traders, 343. Its influence on the 
 commercial classes at Rome ; protest by Memmius, 344. Declaration of war 
 against Jugurtha, 345, Command of Bestia in Numidia (b.c hi), 347. 
 Attitude of Bocchus of Mauretania, 349. Negotiations of Bestia with Jugurtha ; 
 conclusion of peace, 351. Excitement in Rome on the news of the agreement 
 with Jugurtha, 353. Activity of Memmius, 355. Jugurtha induced to come 
 to Rome (e.g. iio), 358. Jugurtha at Rome; the scene at the Contio, 361. 
 Murder of Massiva, 363. Jugurtha leaves Rome and the war is renewed, 
 365. Spurius Albinus in Numidia, 367. He returns to Rome leaving Aulus AI- 
 binus in command, 369. Enterprise of Aulus Albinus ; his defeat and compact 
 with Jugurtha (e.g. 109), 370. Reception of the news at Rome ; the senate 
 invalidates the treaty, 372. Return of Spurius Albinus to Africa, 374. The 
 Mamilian Commission (b.g. no), 375. Metellus appointed to Numidia (b.c 
 log), 380. 
 
Does the Eagle know what is in the pit ? 
 
 Or wilt thou go ask the Mole ? 
 Can Wisdom be put in a silver rod ? 
 
 Or Love in a golden bowl ? 
 
 Blake 
 
A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE period of Roman history on which we now enter is, like so 
 many that had preceded it, a period of revolt, directly aimed 
 against the existing conditions of society and, through the 
 neans taken to satisfy the fresh wants and to alleviate the suddenly 
 ealised, if not suddenly created, miseries of the time, indirectly 
 ifFecting the structui-e of the body politic. The difference between 
 he social movement of the present and that of the past may be 
 ustly described as one of degree, in so far as there was not a single 
 ilement of discontent visible in the revolution commencing with 
 he Gracchi and ending with Caesar that had not been present in 
 he earlier epochs of social and political agitation. iThe burden 
 »f military service, the curse of debt, the poverty of an agrarian 
 )roletariate, the hunger for land, the striving of the artisan and 
 ;he merchant after better conditions of labour and of trade — the 
 eparate cries of discontent that find their unison in a protest 
 igainst the monopoly of office and the narrow or selfish rule of a 
 lominant class, and thus gain a significance as much political as 
 ocial-^%11 these plaints had filled the air at the time when Caius 
 jicinius near the middle of the fourth century, and Appius Claudius 
 it its close, evolved their projects of reform. The cycle of a 
 lation's history can indeed never be broken as long as the character 
 if the nation remains the same. And the average Roman of the 
 aiddle of the second century before our era ^ was in all essential parti- 
 ulars the Roman of the times of Appius and of Licinius, or even of 
 he epoch when the ten commissioners had published the Tables 
 irhich were to stamp its perpetual character on Roman law. He 
 7as in his business relations either oppressor or oppressed, either 
 tammer or anvil. In his private life he was an individualist whose 
 
 ' The average, or at least the most powerful, type of a race is stamped on its 
 istory. It is perhaps needless to say that no generalisations on character apply 
 D all its individual members. 
 1 
 
2 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 sympathies were limited to the narrow circle of his dependants ; he 
 was a trader and a financier whose humanitarian instincts were 
 subordinated to a code of purely commercial morality, and who 
 valued equity chiefly because it presented the line of least resistance 
 and facilitated the conduct of his industrial operations. Like all 
 individualists, he was something of an anarchist, fi;lled with the 
 idea, which appeared on every page of the record of his ancestors 
 and the history of his State, that self-help was the divinely given 
 means of securing right, that true social order was the issue of 
 conflicting claims pushed to their breaking point until a temporary 
 compromise was agreed on by the weary combatants ; but he was 
 hampered in his democratic leanings by the knowledge that demo- 
 cracy is the fruit of individual self-restraint and subordination to 
 the common will — qualities of which he could not boast and symbols 
 of a prize which he would not have cared to attain at the expense 
 of his peculiar ideas of personal freedom — and he was forced, in 
 consequence of this abnegation, to submit to an executive govern- 
 ment as strong, one might almost say as tyrannous, as any which a 
 Republic has ever displayed — a government which was a product of 
 the restless spirit of self-assertion and self-aggrandisement which 
 the Roman felt in himself, and therefore had sufficient reason to 
 suspect in others. 
 
 The Roman was the same; but his environment had changed 
 more startlingly during the last fifty or sixty years than in all the 
 centuries that had preceded them in the history of the Republic. 
 The conquest of Italy had, it is true, given to his city much that 
 was new and fruitful in the domains of religion, of art, of commerce 
 and of law. But these accretions merely entailed the fuller realisa- 
 tion of a tendency which had been marked from the earliest stage 
 of Republican history — the tendency to fit isolated elements in the 
 marvellous discoveries made by the heaven-gifted race of the Greeks 
 into a framework that was thoroughly national and Roman. Ideas 
 had been borrowed, and these ideas certainly resulted in increased 
 efficiency and therefore in increased wealth. But the gross material 
 of Hellenism, whether as realised in intellectual ideas or (the prize 
 that appealed more immediately to the practical Roman with his 
 concrete mind) in tangible things, had not been seized as a whole 
 as the reward of victory : and no great attempt had been made in 
 former ages to assimilate the one or to enjoy the other. The nature 
 of the material rewards which had been secured by the epochs of 
 
CLOSE OF THE PERIOD OF EXPANSION 3 
 
 Italian conquest had indeed made such assimilation or enjoyment 
 impossible. They would have been practicable only in a state 
 which possessed a fairly complete urban life ; and the effect of the 
 wars which Rome waged with her neighbours in the peninsula had 
 been to make the life of the average citizen more purely agricultural 
 than it had been in the early Republic, perhaps even in the epoch 
 of the Kings. The course of a nation's political, social and intel- 
 lectual history is determined very largely by the methods which it 
 adopts for its own expansion at the inevitable moment when its 
 original limits are found to be too narrow to satisfy even the most 
 modest needs of a growing population. The method chosen will 
 depend chiefly on geographical circumstances and on the military 
 characteristics of the people which are indissolubly connected with 
 these. When the city of Old Greece began to feel the strength of 
 its' growing manhood, and the developing hunger which was both 
 the sign and the source of that strength, it looked askance at the 
 mountain line which cut it off from the inland regions, it turned 
 hopeful eyes on the sea that sparkled along its coasts ; it manned 
 its ships and sent its restless youth to a new and distant home 
 which was but a replica of the old. The results of this maritime 
 adventure were the glories of urban life and the all-embracing 
 sweep of Hellenism. The progress of Roman enterprise had been 
 very different. Following the example of all conquering Itahan 
 peoples,^ and especially of the Sabellian invaders whose movements 
 immediately preceded their own, the Romans adopted the course of 
 inland expansion, and such urban unity as they had possessed was 
 dissipated over the vast tract of territory on which the legions were 
 settled, or to which the noble sent his armed retainers, nominally to 
 keep the land as the public domain of Rome, in reality to hold it 
 for himself and his descendants. At a given moment (which is as 
 clearly marked in Roman as in Hellenic history) the possibility of 
 such expansion ceased, and the necessity for its cessation was as 
 fully exhibited in the policy of the government as in the tastes of 
 the people. No Latin colony had been planted later than the year 
 181, no Roman colony later than 157,^ and the senate showed no 
 inclination to renew schemes for the further assignment of territory 
 
 ' Even the Hellenes of the West are only a partial exception. It is true that 
 their cities clung to the coast ; but the vast inland possessions of states like Sybaris 
 are scarcely paralleled elsewhere in the history of Greek colonisation. 
 
 "The Latin colony of Aquileia was settled in the former year (Liv. xl. 34 
 Vellei. i. 15), the Roman colony of Auximum in the latter (Vellei. I.e.). 
 
4 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 amongst the people. There were many reasons for this indifference 
 to colonial enterprise. In the first place, although colonisation 
 had always been a relief to the proletariate and one of the means 
 regularly' adopted by those in power for assuaging its dangerous 
 discontent, yet the government had always regarded the social 
 aspect of this method of expansion as subservient to the strategic.^ 
 This strategic motive no longer existed, and a short-sighted policy, 
 which looked to the present, not to the future, to men of the exist- 
 ing generation and not to their sons, may easily have held that a 
 colony, which was not needed for the protection of the district in 
 which it was settled, injuriously affected the fighting-strength of 
 Rome. The maritime colonies which had been established from 
 the end of the great Latin war down to the close of the second 
 struggle with Carthage claimed, at least in many cases, exemption 
 from military service,^ and a tradition of this kind tends to linger 
 when its justification is a thing of the past. But, even if such a 
 view could be repudiated by the government, it was certain that 
 the levy became a more serious business the greater the number of 
 communities on which the recruiting commander had to call, and 
 it was equally manifest that the veteran who had just been given 
 an allotment on which to establish his household gods might be 
 inclined to give a tardy response to the call to arms. The Latin 
 colony seemed a still greater anachronism than the military colony 
 of citizens. The member of such a community, although the state 
 which he entered enjoyed large privileges of autonomy, ceased to 
 be a Roman citizen in respect to political rights, and even at a time 
 when self-government had been valued almost more than citizen- 
 ship, the government had only been able to carry out its project of 
 pushing these half-independent settlements into the heart of Italy 
 by threatening with a pecuniary penalty the soldier who preferred 
 his rights as a citizen to the benefits which he might receive as an 
 emigrant.^ Now that the great wars had brought their dubious 
 
 ^Cic. de Leg. Agr. ii. 27. 73 Est operae pretium diligentiam majorum recordari, 
 qui colonias sic idoneis in locis contra suspicionem periculi collocarunt, ut esse non 
 oppida Italiae, sed propugnacula imperii viderentur. 
 
 ^ Liv. xxvii. 38 ; xxxvi. 3 ; cf. Marquardt Staatsverwaltung i. p. 51. 
 
 ^The Roman citizen, who entered his name for a Latin colony, suffered the de- 
 rogation of caput which was known to the later jurists as capitis deminutio minor 
 andxxpressed the loss oi civitas (Gaius i. 161 ; iii. 56). That a fine was the alterna- 
 tive of enrolment, hence conceived as voluntary, we are told by Cicero {pro Caec. 
 33. 98 Aut sua voluntate aut legis multa profecti sunt : quam multam si sufferre 
 voluissent, manere in civitate potuissent. Cf. pro Domo 30. 78 Qui cives Romani 
 in colonias Latinas proficiscebantur, fieri non poterant Latini, nisi erant auctores 
 acti nomenque dederant). 
 
DECLINE OF COLONISATION IN ITALY 5 
 
 but at least potential profits to every member of the Roman com- 
 munity, and the gulf between the full citizens and the members of 
 the allied communities was ever widening, it was more than doubt- 
 ful whether a member of the former class, however desperate his 
 plight, would readily condescend to enroll himself amongst the 
 latter. But, even apart from these considerations, it must have 
 seemed very questionable to any one, who held the traditional view 
 that colonisation should subserve the purposes of the State, whether 
 the landless citizen of the time could be trusted to fulfil his duties 
 as an emigrant. As early as the year 186 the consul Spurius 
 Postumius, while making a judicial tour in Italy, had found to his 
 surprise that colonies on both the Italian coasts, Sipontum on the 
 Upper, and Buxentum on the Lower Sea, had been abandoned by 
 their inhabitants : and a new levy had to be set on foot to replace 
 the faithless emigrants who had vanished into space.^ As time 
 went on the risk of such desertion became greater, partly from the 
 growing difliculty of maintaining an adequate living on the land, 
 partly from the fact that the more energetic spirits, on whom alone 
 the hopes of permanent settlement could depend, found a readier 
 avenue to wealth and a more tempting sphere for the exercise of 
 manly qualities in the attractions of a campaign that seemed to 
 promise plunder and glory, especially when these prizes were accom- 
 panied by no exorbitant amount of suffering or toil. Thus when 
 it had become known that Scipio Africanus would accompany his 
 brother in the expedition against Antiochus, five thousand veterans, 
 both citizens and allies, who had served their full time under the 
 command of the former, offered their voluntary services to the de- 
 parting consul,^ and nineteen years later the experience which had 
 been gained of the wealth that might be reaped from a campaign 
 in Macedonia and Asia drew many willing recruits to the legions 
 which were to be engaged in the struggle with Perseus.^ The 
 semi-professional soldier was in fact springing up, the man of a spirit 
 adventurous and restless such as did not promise contentment with 
 the small interests and small rewards of life in an Italian outpost. 
 But, if the days of formal colonisation were over, why might 
 not the concurrent system be adopted of dividing conquered lands 
 amongst poorer citizens without the establishment of a new political 
 
 ' Liv. xxxix. 23. ^ Liv. xxxvii. 4. 
 
 s Liv. xlii. 32 Multi voluntate nomina dabant, quia locupletes videbant, qui 
 priore Macedonico bello, aut adversus Antiochum in Asia, stipendia fecerant. 
 
6 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 settlement or any strict limitation of the number of the recipients ? 
 This 'viritane' assignation had always run parallel to that which 
 assumed the form of colonisation ; it merely required the existence 
 of land capable of distribution, and the allotments granted might 
 be considered merely a means of affording relief to the poorer 
 members of existing municipalities. The system was supposed to 
 have existed from the times of the Kings ; it was believed to have 
 formed the basis of the first agrarian law, that of Spurius Cassius 
 in 486 ; ^ it had been employed after the conquest of the Volscians 
 in the fourth century and that of the Sabines in the third ; ^ it had 
 animated the agrarian legislation of Flaminius when in 232 he 
 romanised the ager Gallicus south of Ariminum without planting 
 a single colony in this region ; ^ and a date preceding the Gracchan 
 legislation by only forty years had seen the resumption of the 
 method, when some Gallic and Ligurian land, held to be the spoil 
 of war and declared to be unoccupied, had been parcelled out into 
 allotments, of ten jugera to Roman citizens and of three to members 
 of the Latin name.* But to the government of the period with which 
 we are concerned the continued pursuance of such a course, if it 
 suggested itself at all, appealed in the light of a policy that was 
 unfamiliar, difficult and objectionable. It is probable that this 
 method of assignment, even in its later phases, had been tinctured 
 with the belief that, like the colony, it secured a system of military 
 control over the occupied district : and that the purely social object 
 of land-distribution, if it had been advanced at all, was considered 
 to be characteristic rather of the demagogue than the statesman. 
 From a strategic point of view such a measure was unnecessary; 
 from an economic, it assumed, not only a craving for allotments 
 amongst the poorer class, of which there was perhaps little evidence, 
 but a belief, which must have been held to be sanguine in the 
 extreme, that these paupers, when provided for, would prove to be 
 
 1 For the assignations viritim in the times of the Kings see Varro R. R. i. lo 
 (Romulus) ; Cic. de Rep. ii. 14. 26 (Numa) ; Liv. i. 46 (Servius TuUius). That the 
 Cassian distribution was to be kbt" &ySpa is stated by Dionysius (viii 72 73) On 
 the whole subject see Mommsen in C. I. L. i. p. 75. He has made out a'good case 
 tor the land thus assigned being known by the technical name of mritanus ager. 
 See Festus p. 373 ; Siculus Flaccus p. 154 Lachm. We shall find that this was 
 the form of distribution effected by the Gracchi. 
 
 HT . 1^°^ *^ settlement in the land of the Volsci see Liv. v. 24 ; for that made by 
 M. Cunus in the Sabine territory, Colum. i. praef. 14; [Victor] de Vir. III. 33. 
 
 Cato ap. Varr. R. R. i, 2. 7 Ager Gallicus Romanus vocatur, qui viritim cis 
 Ariminum datus est ultra agrum Picentium ; cf. Cic. Brut. 14. 57 ; de Senect. 4. 
 11; Val. Max. v. 4. 5. ■ .<» > -r 
 
 * Liv. xlii. 4 (173 B.C.) ; cf. xli. 16. 
 
DIFFICULTY OF LAND-ASSIGNMENT 7 
 
 efficient farmers capable of maintaining a position which many of 
 them had already lost. Again, if such an assignment was to be 
 made, it should be made on land immediately after it had passed 
 from the possession of the enemy to that of Rome ; if time had 
 elapsed since the date of annexation, it was almost certain that 
 claims of some kind had been asserted over the territory, and 
 shadowy as these claims might be, the Roman law had, in the 
 interest of the State itself, always tended to recognise a de facto as 
 a de jure right. The claims of the allies and the municipalities 
 had also to be considered ; for assignments to Roman citizens on an 
 extensive scale would inevitably lead to difficult questions about 
 the rights which many of these townships actually possessed to 
 much of the territory whose revenue they enjoyed. If the allies 
 and the municipal towns did not suffer, the loss must fall on the 
 Roman State itself, which derived one of its chief sources of stable 
 and permanent revenue — the source which was supposed to meet 
 the claims for Italian administration ^ — from its domains in Italy, 
 on the contractors who collected this revenue, and on the enter- 
 prising capitalists who had put their wealth and energy into the 
 waste places to which they had been invited by the government, 
 and who had given these devastated territories much of the value 
 which they now possessed. Lastly, these enterprising possessors 
 were strongly represented in the senate ; the leading members of 
 the nobility had embarked on a new system of agriculture, the 
 results of which were inimical to the interest of the small farmer, 
 and the conditions of which would be undermined by a vast system 
 of distribution such as could alone suffice to satisfy the pauper pro- 
 letariate. The feeling that a future agrarian law was useless from 
 an economic and dangerous from a political point of view, was 
 strengthened by the conviction that its proposal would initiate a 
 war amongst classes, that its failure would exasperate the commons 
 and that its success would inflict heavy pecuniary damage on the 
 guardians of the State. 
 
 Thus the simple system of territorial expansion, which had con- 
 tinued in an unintei-rupted course from the earliest days of conquest, 
 might be now held to be closed for ever. From the point of view 
 
 ^ The other sources were the fortoria and the vicesima Ubertatis. Even at a 
 period when the revenues from the provinces were infinitely larger than they were at 
 the present time Cicero could write, with reference to Caesar's proposal for dis- 
 tributing the Campanian land, Portoriis Italiae sublatis, agro Campano diviso, 
 quod vectigal superest domesticum praeter vicensimam ? (Cic. ad AH. ii. i6. i). 
 
8 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 of the Italian neighbours of Rome it was indeed ample time that 
 such a closing period should be reached. If we possessed a map of 
 Italy which showed the relative proportions of land in Italy and 
 Cisalpine Gaul which had been seized by Rome or left to the native 
 cities or tribes, we should probably find that the possessions of the 
 conquering State, whether occupied by colonies, absorbed by the 
 gift of citizenship, or held as public domain, amounted to nearly 
 one half of the territory of the whole peninsula.^ The extension of 
 such progress was clearly impossible unless war were to be provoked 
 with the Confederacy which furnished so large a proportion of the 
 fighting strength of Rome ; but, if it was confessed that extension 
 on the old lines was now beyond reach of attainment and yet it was 
 agreed that the existing resources of Italy did not furnish an 
 adequate hvelihood to the majority of the citizens of Rome, but two 
 methods of expansion could be thought of as practicable in the 
 future. One was agrarian assignation at the expense either of the 
 State or of the richer classes or of both ;_ the other was enterprise 
 beyond the sea. But neither of these seemed to deserve govern- 
 ment intervention, or regulation by a scheme which would satisfy 
 either immediate or future wants. The one was repudiated, as we 
 have already shown, on account of its novelty, its danger and its 
 inconvenience ; the other seemed emphatically a matter for private 
 enterprise and above all for private capital. It could never be 
 available for the very poor unless it assumed the form of colonisa- 
 tion, and the senate looked on transmarine colonisation with the 
 eye of prejudice.^ It took a different view of the enterprise of the 
 foreign speculator and merchant ; this it regarded with an air of 
 easy indifference. Their wealth was a pillar on which the State 
 might lean in times of emergency, but, until the disastrous effects of 
 commercial enterprise on foreign policy were more clearly seen, it 
 was considered to be no business of the government either to help 
 or to hinder the wealthy and enterprising Roman in his dealings 
 with the peoples of the subject or protected lands. 
 
 Rome, if by this name we mean the great majority of Roman 
 citizens, was for the first time for centuries in a situation in which 
 all movement and all progress seemed to be denied. The force of 
 
 ' See the map attempted by Beloch in his work Der Italische Bund unter Roms 
 Hegemonie. 
 
 2 Vellei. ii. 7. See ch. iv., where the attitude of the senate towards the pro- 
 posals for transmarine settlement made by Caius Gracchus is described. 
 
THE CLOSE OF THE LONG WARS 9 
 
 the community seemed to have spent itself for the time ; as a force 
 proceeding from the whole community it had perhaps spent itself 
 for ever. A section of the nominally sovereign people might yet be 
 welded into a mighty instrument that would carry victoiy to the 
 ends of the earth, and open new channels of enterprise both for the 
 men who guided their movements and for themselves. But for 
 the moment the State was thrown back upon itself; it held that an 
 end had been attained, and the attainment naturally suggested a 
 pause, a long survey of the results which had been reached by these 
 long years of struggle with the hydra-headed enemy abroad. The 
 close of the third Macedonian war is said by a contemporary to 
 have brought with it a restful sense of security such as Rome could 
 not have felt for centuries.^ Such a security gave scope to the rich 
 to enjoy 'the material advantages which their power had acquired ; 
 but it also gave scope to the poor to reflect on the strange harvest 
 which the conquest of the great powers of the world had brought to 
 the men whose stubborn patience had secured the peace which they 
 were given neither the means nor the leisure to enjoy. The men 
 who evaded or had completed their service in the legions lacked the 
 means, although they had the leisure ; the men who still obeyed 
 the summons to arms lacked both, unless the respite between pro- 
 longed campaigns could be called leisure, or the booty, hardly won 
 and quickly squandered, could be described as means. Even after 
 Carthage had been destroyed Rome, though doubly safe, was still 
 busy enough with her legions ; the government of Spain was one 
 protracted war, and proconsuls were still striving to win triumphs 
 for themselves by improving on their predecessors' work.^ But 
 such war could not absorb the energy or stimulate the interest of 
 the people as a whole. The reaction which had so often followed 
 a successful campaign, when the discipline of the camp had been 
 shaken off and the duties of the soldier were replaced by the wants 
 of the citizen, was renewed on a scale infinitely larger than before — 
 a scale proportioned to the magnitude of the strain which had been 
 removed and the greatness of the wants which had been revived. 
 The cries for reform may have been of the old familiar type ^ but 
 
 ' Polyb. xxxii. ii. 
 
 2 Besides the continued war in Spain from 145 to 133 there were troubles in 
 Macedonia (in 142) and in Sicily during this period of comparative peace. Circa 
 140-135 commences the great slave rising in that island, and in the latter year the 
 long series of campaigns against the free Illyrian and Thracian peoples begins. 
 
 3 P. I. 
 
10 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 their increased intensity and variety may almost be held to hav| 
 given them a difference of quality. There is a stage at which a 
 difference of degree seems to amount to one of kind : and this stage 
 seems certainly to have been reached in the social problems pre- 
 sented by the times. In the old days of the struggle between the 
 orders the question of privilege had sometimes overshadowed the 
 purely economic issue, and although a close scrutiny of those days 
 of turmoil shows that the dominant note in the conflict was often a 
 mere pretext meant to serve the personal ambition of the champions 
 of the Plebs, yet the appearance rather than the reality of an issue 
 imposes on the imagination of the mob, and political emancipatio:^ 
 had been thought a boon even when hard facts had shown that its 
 greater prizes had fallen to a small and selfish minority. Now,- 
 however, there could be no illusion. There was nothing but 
 material wants on one side, there was nothing but material power 
 on the other. The intellectual claims which might be advance|| 
 to justify a monopoly of office and of wealth, could be met by an 
 intellectual superiority on the part of a demagogue clamouring for 
 confiscation. The ultimate basis of the life of the State was for the 
 first time to be laid bare and subjected to a merciless scrutiny; it 
 remained to be seen which of the two great forces of society would 
 prevail ; the force of habit which had so often blinded the Roman 
 to his real needs ; or the force of want which, because it so seldom 
 won a victory over his innate conservatism, was wont, when that 
 victory had been won, to sweep him farther on the path of reckless, 
 and inconsistent reform than it would have carried a race bett^ 
 endowed with the gift of testing at every stage of progress the ends 
 and needs of the social organism considered as a whole.. 
 
 An analysis of social discontent at any period of history must 
 take the form of an examination of the wants engendered by the 
 age, and of the adequacy or inadequacy of their means of satisfac- 
 tion. If we turn our attention first to the forces of society which: 
 were in possession of the fortress and were to be the object of 
 attack, we shall find that the ruling desires which animated these 
 men of wealth and influence were chiefly the product of the new 
 cosmopolitan culture which the victorious city had begun to 
 absorb in the days when conquest and diplomacy had first been 
 carried across the seas. To this she fell a willing victim when 
 the conquered peoples, bending before the rude force which had 
 but substituted a new suzerainty for an old and had scarcely 
 
NEW INFLUENCES ON LIFE 11 
 
 •touched their inner life, began to display before the eyes of their 
 Wonished conquerors the material comfort and the spiritual charm 
 Vhich, in the case of the contact of a potent but narrow civilisation 
 .with one that is superbly elastic and strong in the very elegance of 
 'its physical debility, can always turn defeat into victory. But the 
 'student who begins his investigation of the new Roman life with the 
 'study of Roman society as it existed in the latter half of the second 
 ''century before our era, cannot venture to gather up the threads 
 p of the purely intellectual and moral influences which were created 
 sby the new Hellenistic civilisation. He feels that he is only at the 
 'beginning of a process, that he lacks material for his picture, that 
 ithe illustrative matter which he might employ is to be found 
 ' mainly in the literary records of a later age, and that his use of this 
 matter would but involve him in the historical sins of anticipation 
 '?and anachronism. Of some phases of the war between the old 
 I spirit and the new we shall find occasion to speak ; but the cul- 
 minating point attained by the blend of Greek with Roman 
 ; elements is the only one which is clearly visible to modern eyes. 
 This point, however, was reached at the earliest only in the second 
 half of the next century. It was only then that the fusion of the 
 i seemingly discordant elements gave birth to the new " Romanism," 
 ! which was to be the ruling civilisation of Italy and the Western 
 provinces and, in virtue of the completeness of the amalgamation 
 ; and the novelty of the product, was itself to be contrasted and to 
 [ Hve for centuries in friendly rivalry with the more uncompromising 
 ; Hellenism of Eastern lands. But some of the economic effects of 
 ; the new influences claim our immediate attention, for we are en- 
 gaged in the study of the beginnings of an economic revolution, and 
 ; an analysis must therefore be attempted of some of the most press- 
 : ing needs and some of the keenest desires which were awakened 
 i by Hellenism, either in the purer dress which old Greece had 
 ; given it or in the more gorgeous raiment which it had assumed 
 dining its sojourn in the East. 
 
 A tendency to treat the city as the home, the country only as 
 ! a means of refreshment and a sphere of elegant retirement during 
 that portion of the year when the excitement of the urban season, 
 I its business and its pleasure, were suspended, began to be a marked 
 feature of the life of the upper classes. The man of afiairs and the 
 man of high finance were both compelled to have their domicile in 
 the town, and, if agriculture was still the staple or the supplement 
 
12 A HISTORY OF EOME 
 
 of their wealth, the needs of the estate had to be left to the super- 
 vision of the resident bailiff.^ This concentration of the upp^ 
 classes in the city necessarily entailed a great advance m the price 
 and rental of house property within the walls. It is true that the 
 reckless prices paid for houses, especially for country villas, bj 
 the grandees and millionaires of the next generation,^ had not yet 
 been reached ; but the indications with which we are furnished of 
 the general rise of prices for everything in Rome that could be 
 deemed desirable by a cultivated taste,^ show that the better class 
 of house property must already have yielded large returns, whether 
 it were sold or let, and we know that poor scions of the nobihty, if 
 business or pleasure induced them to spend a portion of the year in 
 Rome, had soon to climb the stairs of flats or lodgings.* The 
 pressure for room led to the piling of storey on storey. On tlft 
 roof of old houses new chambers were raised, which could be reached 
 by an outside stair, and either served to accommodate the increased 
 retinue of the town establishment or were let to strangers who 
 possessed no dwelling of their own ; * the still larger lodging-houses 
 or " islands," which derived their name from their lofty isolation 
 from neighbouring buildings,* continued to spring up, and even 
 private houses soon came to attain a height which had to be re- 
 strained by the intervention of the law. An ex-consul and augui 
 was called on by the censors of 125 to explain the magnitude 
 of a villa which he had raised, and the altitude of the structure 
 exposed him not only to the strictures of the guardians of morals but 
 to a fine imposed by a public court.'' Great changes were effected 
 
 1 The officia of the villicus have become very extensive even in Cato's time 
 (Cato R. R. 5). Their extent implies the assumption of very prolonged absences on 
 the part of the master. 
 
 2 Lucullus paid 500,200 drachmae for the house at Misenum which had once be- 
 longed to Cornelia. She had purchased it for 75,000 (Plut. Afar. 34). Marius had 
 been its intermediate owner. Even during his occupancy it is described as uoXvnKkii 
 o'tKta Tpui^cts ex"""'" ""^ Siairas Bri\vTepas ^ kot liySpa TTO\ifUin' TOtroiruv ko! ffTparfm 
 aiiTovpy6v. 
 
 " Diod. xxxvii. 3. 
 
 ■* Sulla rented one of the lower floors for 3000 sesterces (Plut. Sulla i). 
 
 ^ The coenaculum is mentioned by Livy (xxxix. 14) in connection with the year 
 186 B.C. It is known both to Ennius (ap. TertuU. adv. Valent. 7) and to Plautus 
 {Amph. iii. i. 3). 
 
 ° Festus p. III. The insula resembled a large hotel, with one or more courts, 
 and bounded on all sides by streets. See Smith Diet, of Antiq. (3rd ed.) i. p. 665. 
 
 'Val. Max. viii. i. damn. 7 Admodum severae notae et illud populi judiciumi 
 cum M. Aemilium Porcinam (consul 137 B.C.) a L. Cassio (censor 125 B.C.) accusa- 
 tum crimine nimis sublime extructae villae in Alsiensi agro gravi multa affecit. The 
 author does not sufficiently distinguish between the censorian initiative and the 
 operation of the law. The passage is important as showing the existence of an 
 
CHANGES IN DOMESTIC LIFE 13 
 
 jin the interior structure of the houses of the wealthy — changes excused 
 I by a pardonable desire for greater comfort and rendered necessary 
 .both by the growing formality of life and the large increase in the 
 .numbers of the resident household, but tending, when once adopted, 
 to draw the father of the family into that most useless type of 
 J extravagance which takes the form of a craze for building. The 
 , Hall or Atrium had once been practically the house. It opened 
 I on the street. It contained the family bed and the kitchen fire. 
 I The smoke passed through a hole in the I'oof and begrimed the 
 , family portraits that looked down on the members of the household 
 , gathered round the hearth for their common meal. The Hall was 
 the chief bedroom, the kitchen, the dining-room and the reception 
 room, and it was also the only avenue from the street to the small 
 courtyard at the back. The houses of the great had hitherto 
 differed from those of the poor chiefly in dimensions and but very 
 slightly in structure. The home of the wealthy patrician had 
 simply been on a larger scale of primitive discomfort ; and if his 
 large parlour built of timber could accommodate a vast host of clients, 
 the bed and the cooking pots were still visible to every visitor. 
 The chief of the early innovations had been merely a low portico, 
 borrowed from the Greeks by the Etruscans and transmitted by 
 them to Rome, which ran round the courtyard, was divided into 
 little cells and chambers, and served to accommodate the servants of 
 the house. ^ But now fashion dictated that the doorway should 
 not front the street but should be parted from it by a vestibule, in 
 which the early callers gathered before they were admitted to the 
 hall of audience. The floor of the Atrium was no longer the 
 common passage to the regions at the back, but a special corridor 
 lying either on one or on both sides of the HalP led past the 
 Study or Tablinum, immediately behind it, to the inner court 
 beyond. Even the sanctity of the nuptial couch could not con- 
 tinue to give it the publicity which was irksome to the taste of 
 an age which had acquired notions of the dignity of seclusion, of 
 
 enactment on the height of buildings. See Voigt in Iwan-Miiller's Handbuch iv. 2, 
 p. 394, and cf. Vellei. ii. 10. Augustus limited the height of houses to 70 feet 
 (Strabo v. p. 235). 
 
 ' Diodor. v. 40 (The Etruscans) in . • • rais olxlais ra irepiarcfa irphs t&j tSiv 
 BepairevivTav Kx^o"' rapax^s ^{tupoc euxpio'Ttai'. See Krause Deinokrates p. 528. 
 
 ' In spite of the plural form fauces (Vitruv. vi, 3. 6) may denote only a single 
 passage. See Marquardt Privatl. p. 240 ; Smith and Middleton in Smith Diet, of 
 Antiq. i. p. 671. 
 
14 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 the comfort that was to be found in retirement, and of the con- 
 venience of separating the chambers that were used for public from 
 those which were employed for merely private purposes. The 
 chief bedrooms were shifted to the back, and the sides of the court- 
 yard were no longer the exclusive abode of the dependants of the 
 household. The common hearth could no longer serve as the sphere 
 of the cuhnary operations of an expensive cook with his retinue of 
 menials ; the cooking fire was removed tq one of the rooms near the 
 back-gate of the house, which finally became an ample kitchen repletfe 
 with all the imported means of satisfying the growing luxury of the 
 table ; and the member of the family loitering in the hall, or the visitor 
 admitted through its portals, was spared the annoyances of strong 
 smells and pungent smoke. The Roman family also discovered the 
 discomfort of dining in a large and scantily furnished room, not too 
 well lit and accessible to the intrusions of the chance domestic and 
 the caller. It was deemed preferable to take the common meal in 
 a light and airy upper chamber, and the new type of Coenaculum 
 satisfied at once the desire for personal comfort and for that spe- 
 cialisation in the use of apartments which is one of the chief signs 
 of an advancing material civilisation. The great hall had become 
 the show-room of the house, but even for this purpose its dimensions 
 proved too small. Such was the quantity of curios and works of 
 art collected by the conquering or travelled Roman that greater 
 space was needed for the exhibition of their rarity or splendour. 
 This space was gained by the removal from the Atrium of all the 
 domestic obstacles with which it had once been cumbered. It might 
 now be made slightly smaller in its proportion to the rest of the 
 house and yet appear far more ample than before. The space by 
 which its sides were diminished could now be utilised for the build- 
 ing of two wings or Alae, which served the threefold purpose of 
 lighting the hall from the sides, of displaying to better advantage, as 
 an oblong chamber always does, the works of art which the lord of 
 the mansion or his butler ^ displayed to visitor or client, and lastly 
 of serving as a gallery for the family portraits, which were finally! 
 removed from the Atrium, to be seen to greater advantage and in 
 a better light on the walls of the wings. These now displayed the 
 family tree through painted lines which connected the little shrines 
 
 ' For this atriensis, the English butler, the continental porter, see the frequent 
 references in Plautus (e.g., Asin. ii. 2. 80 and loi ; Pseud, ii. 2. 15), Krause Deitw- 
 krates p. 534 and Marquardt Privatl. p. 140. 
 
CHANGES IN DOMESTIC LIFE 15 
 
 holding the inscribed imagines of the great ancestors of the house.^ 
 It is also possible that the Alae served as rooms for more private 
 audiences than were possible in the Atrium.^ From the early 
 morning crowd which thronged the hall individuals or groups might 
 have been detached by the butler, and led to the presence of the 
 great statesman or pleader who paced the floor in the retirement of 
 one of these long side-galleries.' Business of a yet more private 
 kind was transacted in the still greater security of the Tablinum, 
 the archive room and study of the house. Here were kept, not 
 only the family records and the family accounts, but such of the 
 official registers and papers as a magistrate needed to have at hand 
 during his year of office.* The domestic transaction of official 
 business was very large at Rome, for the State had given its 
 administrators not even the skeleton of a civil service, and it was 
 in this room that the consul locked himself up with his quaestor 
 and his scribes, as it was here that, as a good head of the family 
 and a careful business man, he carefully perused the record of 
 income and expenditure, of gains and losses, with his skilled Greek 
 accountant. 
 
 The whole tendency of the reforms in domestic architecture was 
 to differentiate between the public and private life of the man of 
 business or affairs. His public activity was confined to the fore- 
 part of the house ; his repose, his domestic joys, and his private 
 pleasures were indulged in the buildings which lay behind the 
 Atrium and its wings. As each of the departments of life became 
 more ambitious, the sphere for the exercise of the one became more 
 magnificent, and that which fostered the other the scene of a more 
 perfect, because more quiet, luxury. The Atrium was soon to be- 
 come a palatial hall adorned with marble colonnades ; ' the small 
 
 ' Plin. H. N. XXXV. 6 Stemmata vero lineis discurrebant ad imagines pictas. 
 It is not known at what period the imagines were transferred from the Atrium to the 
 Alae. 
 
 ^ Overbeck Pompeii p. 192 ; Krause Deinohrates p. 539. 
 
 ^ For the practice started, or developed, by Caius Gracchus of receiving visitors, 
 some singly, others in smaller or larger groups, see Seneca de Ben. vi. 34. 2 and 
 the description of Gracchus' tribunate in chapter iv. 
 
 * Festus p. 357 (according to Mommsen, Abh. der Berl. Akad. Phil.-hist. Classe, 
 1864 p. 68) Tablinum proxime atrium locus dicitur, quod antiqui magistratus in 
 suo imperio tabulis rationum ibi habebant publicarum rationum causa factum locum ; 
 Plin. H. N. XXXV. 7 Tabulina codicibus implebantur et monimentis rerum in magis- 
 tratu gestarum. Marquardt, however (Privatl. p. 215) thinks that the name tablinum 
 is derived from the fact that this chamber was originally made of planks (tablinum 
 from tabula ss figUnum from figulus). 
 
 ° The earliest instances of extreme extravagance in the use of building material 
 —of the use, for instance, of Hymettian and Numidian marble — are furnished by 
 
16 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 yard with its humble portico at the back was to be transformed ini 
 the Greek Peristyle, a court open to the sky and surrounded by 
 columns, which enclosed a greenery of shrubs and trees and an 
 atmosphere cooled and freshened by the constant play of fountai: 
 The final form of the Roman house was an admirable type of the 
 new civilisation. It was Roman and yet Greek ^ — Roman in the 
 grand front that it presented to the world, Greek in the quiet 
 background of thought and sentiment. 
 
 The growing splendour of the house demanded a number and 
 variety in its human servitors that had not been dreamed of in a 
 simpler age. The slave of the farm, with his hard hands and 
 weather-beaten visage, could no longer be brought by his elegaii 
 master to the town and exhibited to a fastidious society as the 
 type of servant that ministered to his daily needs. The urban and 
 rustic family were now kept wholly distinct ; it was only when 
 some child of marked grace and beauty was born on the farm, that 
 it was transferred to the mansion as containing a promise that 
 would be wasted on rustic toil.^ In every part of the establish- 
 ment the taste and wealth of the owner might be tested by the 
 courtliness and beauty of its living instruments. The chained dog 
 at the gate had been replaced by a human janitor, often himself in 
 chains.^ The visitor, when he had passed the porter, was received 
 by the butler in the hall, and admitted to the master's presence by 
 a series of footmen and ushers, the show servants of the fore-part 
 of the house, men of the impassive dignity and obsequious repose 
 that servitude but strengthens in the Oriental mind.* In the 
 penetralia of the household each need created by the growing ideal 
 of comfort and refinement required its separate band of ministers, 
 
 the houses of the orator Lucius Licinius Crassus (built about ga B.C.) and of Marcus 
 Aemilius Lepidus, consul in 78 B.C. This growth of luxury will be treated when 
 we come to deal with the civilisation of the Ciceronian period. 
 
 1 As Krause expresses it (DeinokraUs p. 542), at the final stage we find a Greek 
 " Hinterhaus" standing behind an old Italian " Vorderhaus ". 
 ^The case mentioned by Juvenal (xi. 151) 
 
 Pastoris duri hie est filius, ille bubulci. 
 Suspirat longo non visam tempore matrem, 
 Et casulam, et notos tristis desiderat haedos, 
 
 must have been of frequent occurrence as soon as the urban and ru&tic familiae had 
 been kept distinct. 
 
 ' Suetonius says (de Rhet. 3) of L. Voltacilius Pilutus, one of the teachers J 
 Pompeius, Servisse dicitur atque etiam ostiarius vetere more in catena fuisse. 
 
 ^For these atrienses, atriarii, admissionales, velarii see Wallon Hist, dt 
 I'Esclavage ii. p. 108. 
 
GROWTH OF LUXURY 17 
 
 The body of the bather was rubbed and perfumed by experts in 
 the art ; the service of the table was in the hands of men who 
 had made catering and the preparation of delicate viands the sole 
 business of their lives. The possession of a cook, who could answer 
 to the highest expectations of the age, was a prize beyond the 
 reach of all but the most wealthy ; for such an expert the sum of 
 four talents had to be paid ; ^ he was the prize of the million- 
 aire, and families of more moderate means, if they wished a banquet 
 to be elegantly served, were forced to hire the temporary services 
 of an accomplished artist.^ The housekeeper,^ who supervised the 
 resources of the pantry, guided the destinies of the dinner in con- 
 cert with the chef ; and each had under him a crowd of assistants 
 of varied names and carefully differentiated functions.* The busi- 
 ness of the outer world demanded another class of servitors. There 
 were special valets charged with the functions of taking notes and 
 invitations to their masters' friends ; there was the valued attendant 
 of quick eye and ready memory, an incredibly rich store-house of 
 names and gossip, an impartial observer of the ways and weak- 
 nesses of every class, who could inform his master of the name and 
 attributes of the approaching stranger. There were the lackeys 
 who formed the nucleus of the attendant retinue of clients for the 
 man when he walked abroad, the boys of exquisite form with 
 slender limbs and innocent faces, who were the attendant spirits 
 of the lady as she passed in her litter down the street. The 
 muscles of the stouter slaves now offered facilities for easy journey- 
 , ing that had been before unknown. The Roman official need not 
 sit his horse during the hot hours of the day as he passed through 
 the hamlets of Italy, and the grinning rustic could ask, as he 
 watched the solemn and noiseless transit of the bearers, whether 
 the carefully drawn curtains did not conceal a corpse.* 
 
 The internal luxury of the household was as fully exhibited 
 in lifeless objects as in living things. Rooms were scented with 
 fragrant perfumes and hung with tapestries of great price and 
 
 1 Diod. xxxvii. 3 ; Sallust (yug. 85) makes Marius say (107 b.c) Neque pluris 
 pretii coquum quain villicum habeo. Livy (xxxix. 6) remarks with reference to the 
 consequences of the return of Manlius' army from Asia in 187 B.C. Tum coquus, 
 vilissimum antiquis mancipium et aestimatione et usu,^ in pretio esse ; et, quod 
 ministerium fiierat, ars haberi coepta. 
 
 * Plin. H. N. xviii. 108 Nee coquos vero habebant in servitiis eosque ex macello 
 conducebant. The practice is mentioned by Plautus (Aul. ii. 4. i ; iii. 2. 15). 
 
 ^ Condus promus (Plaut. Pseud, ii. 2. 14). 
 
 * Wallon op. cit. ii. p. iii. " C. Gracchus ap. Gell. x. 3. 5. 
 
 2 
 
18 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 varied bloom. //Tables were set with works of silver, ivory and 
 other precious material, wrought with the most delicate skill. 
 Wine of moderate flavour was despised ; Falernian and Chian were 
 the only brands that the true connoisseur would deem worthy of 
 his taste. A nice discrimination was made in the qualities of the 
 rarer kinds of fish, and other delicacies of the table were sought in 
 proportion to the difficulty of their attainment. The fashions of 
 dress followed the tendency of the age ; the rarity of the material, 
 its fineness of texture, the ease which it gave to the body, were the 
 objects chiefly sought. Young men were seen in the Forum in 
 robes of a material as soft as that worn by women and almost 
 transparent in its thinness. Since all these instruments of plea- 
 sure, and the luxury that appealed to ambition even more keenly 
 than to taste, were pursued with a ruinous competition, prices were 
 forced up to an incredible degree. An amphora of Falernian wine 
 cost one hundred denarii, a jar of Pontic salt -fish four hundred ; a 
 young Roman would often give a talent for a favourite, and boys 
 who ranked in the highest class for beauty of face and elegance of 
 form fetched even a higher price than this.^ Few could have been 
 inclined to contradict Cato when he said in the senate-house that 
 Rome was the only city in the world where a jar of preserved fish 
 from the Black Sea cost more than a yoke of oxen, and a boy- 
 favourite fetched a higher price than a yeoman's farm.^ One of 
 the great objects of social ambition was to have a heavier service 
 of silver-plate than was possessed by any of one's neighbours. In 
 the good old days, — ^days not so long past, but severed from the pre- 
 sent by a gulf that circumstances had made deeper than the years 
 — the Roman had had an official rather than a personal pride in 
 the silver which he could display before the respectful eyes of the 
 distinguished foreigner who was the guest of the State ; and the 
 Carthaginian envoys had been struck by the similarity between the 
 silver services which appeared at the tables of their various hosts. 
 The experience led them to a higher estimate of Roman brother- 
 hood than of Roman wealth, and the silver-plate that had done 
 such varied duty was at least responsible for a moral triumph.* Only 
 a few years before the commencement of the first war with Carthage 
 
 1 Polyb. xxxii. ii ; Diodor. xxxvii. 3. ^ Diod. I.e. 
 
 "Plin. H. N. xxxiii. 143 Invenimus legates Carthaginiensium dixisse nuUos 
 hominum inter se benignius vivere quam Romanes. Eodem enim argento apud 
 omnes cenitavisse ipsos. 
 
COLLECTION OF WORKS OF ART 19 
 
 Rufinus^a consular had been expelled from the senate for having 
 ten pounds of the wrought metal in his keeping/ and Scipio Aemi- 
 lianus, a man of the present age, but an adherent of the older school, 
 left but thirty-two pounds' weight to his heir. Less than forty years 
 later the younger Livius Drusus was known to be in possession of 
 plate that weighed ten thousand pounds,^ and the accretions to 
 the primitive hoard which must have been made by but two or three 
 members of this family may serve as an index of the extent to 
 which this particular form of the passion for display had influenced 
 the minds and practice of the better-class Romans of the day. 
 
 There were other objects, valued for their intrinsic worth as 
 much as for the distinction conveyed by their possession, which 
 attracted the ambition and strained the revenues of the fashionable 
 man. Works of art must once have been cheap on the Roman 
 market ; for, even if we refuse to credit the story of Mummius' 
 estimate of the prize which fallen Corinth had delivered into his 
 hands,' yet the transhipment of cargoes of the priceless treasures to 
 Rome is at least an historic fact, and the Gracchi must themselves 
 have seen the trains of wagons bearing their precious freight along 
 the Via Sacra to the Capitol. The spoils of the generous conqueror 
 were lent to adorn the triumphs, the public buildings and even the 
 private houses, of others ; but much that had been yielded by 
 Corinth had become the property neither of the general nor of the 
 State. Polybius had seen the Roman legionaries playing at draughts 
 on the Dionysus of Aristeides and many another famous canvas 
 which had been torn from its place and thrown as a carpet upon 
 the ground ; * but many a camp follower must have had a better 
 estimate of the material value of the paintings of the Hellenic 
 masters, and the cupidity of the Roman collector must often have 
 been satisfied at no great cost to his resources. The extent to 
 which a returning army could disseminate its acquired tastes and 
 distribute its captured goods had been shown some forty years 
 before the fall of Corinth when Manlius brought his legions back 
 from the first exploration of the rich cities of Asia. Things and 
 names, of which the Roman had never dreamed, soon gratified 
 the eye and struck the ear with a familiar sound. He learnt to 
 love the bronze couches meant for the dining hall, the slender side 
 tables with the strange foreign name, the delicate tissues woven to 
 
 ' Val. Max. ii. 9, 3. ' Plin. H. N. xxxiii. 141. 
 
 »Vellei. i. 13. < Polyb. xl. 7. 
 
20 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 form the hangings of the bed or litter, the notes struck from the 
 psalter and the harp by the fingers of the dancing-women of the 
 East.i This was the first iiTuption of the efflorescent luxury of 
 Eastern Hellenism ; but some five-and-twenty years before this date 
 Rome had received her first experience of the purer taste of the 
 Greek genius in the West. The whole series of the acts of artistic 
 vandalism which marked the footsteps of the conquering state 
 could be traced back to the measures taken by Claudius Marcellus 
 after the fall of Syracuse. The systematic plunder of works of art 
 was for the first time given an official sanction, and the public 
 edifices of Rome were by no means the sole beneficiaries of this 
 new interpretation of the rights of war. Much of the valuable 
 plunder had found its way into private houses,^ to stimulate the 
 envious cupidity of many a future governor who, cursed with the 
 taste of a collector and unblessed by the opportunity of a war, 
 would make subtle raids on the artistic treasures of his province a 
 secret article of his administration. When the ruling classes of a 
 nation have been famiharised for the larger part of a century with 
 the easy acquisition of the best material treasures of the world, 
 things that have once seemed luxuries come to fill an easy place 
 in the category of accepted wants. But the sudden supply has 
 stopped ; the market value, which plunder has destroyed or 
 lessened, has risen to its normal level; another burden has been 
 added to life, there is one further stimulus to wealth and, so press- 
 ing is the social need, that the means to its satisfaction are not 
 likely to be too diligently scrutinised before they are adopted. 
 
 More pardonable were the tastes that were associated with the 
 more purely intellectual elements in Hellenic culture — with the in- 
 fluence which the Greek rhetor or philosopher exercised in his 
 converse with the stern but receptive minds of Rome, the love of 
 books, the new lessons which were to be taught as to the rhythmic 
 flow of language and the rhythmic movement of the limbs. The 
 Greek adventurer was one of the most striking features of the 
 epoch which immediately followed the close of the great wars. 
 
 ' Liv. xxxix. 6 Lectos aeratos . . . plagulas . . . monopodia et abacos Romam 
 advexerunt. Tunc psaltriae sambucistriaeque et convivalia ludionum oblectamenta 
 addita epulis. C/. Plin. H. N. xxxiv. 14. 
 
 2 Polyb. ix. 10 'Vufiaioi S^ fisTOKOfiiffavres tcl -Trpoeiprifisya rais fiev ISioyrtiaus 
 KaTaffK^vais tovs auruv 4K6<rfnj(ray $iouSf rais 5e bjifiofflaLS r^ Koiv^ ttjs 'ir6\ea>s> 
 Another great raid was that made by Fulvius Nobilior in 189 B.C. on the art 
 treasures of the Ambraciots (Signa aenea marmoreaque et tabulae pictae, Liv. 
 xxxviii. 9). 
 
REVERENCE FOR GREEK CULTURE 21 
 
 ater thinkers, generally of the resentfully national, academic and 
 ieudo-historical type, who repudiated the amenities of life which 
 ley continued to enjoy, and cherished the pleasing fiction of the 
 iiempiary mores of the ancient times, could see little in him but a 
 lurce of unmixed evil ; i and indeed the Oriental Greek of the com- 
 oner type, let loose upon the society of the poorer quarters, or 
 orming his way into the confidence of some rich but uneducated 
 laster, must often have been the vehicle of lessons that would 
 stter have been unlearnt. But Italy also saw the advent of the 
 3st professors of the age, golden-mouthed men who spoke in the 
 mguage of poetry, rhetoric and philosophy, and who turned from 
 le wearisome competition of their own circles and the barren fields 
 r their former labours to find a flattering attention, a pleasing 
 ignity, and the means of enjoying a full, peaceful and leisured life 
 1 the homes of Roman aristocrats, thirsting for knowledge and 
 lirsting still more for the mastery of the unrivalled forms in which 
 leir own deeds might be preserved and through which their own 
 olitical and forensic triumphs might be won. Soon towns of Italy 
 -especially those of the Hellenic South — would be vying with each 
 bher to grant the freedom of their cities and other honours in their 
 ift to a young emigrant poet who hailed from Antioch, and mem- 
 ers of the noblest houses would be competing for the honour of his 
 iendship and for the privilege of receiving him under their roof.^ 
 'he stream of Greek learning was broad and strong ; ^ it bore on its 
 osom every man and woman who aimed at a reputation for 
 legance, for wit or for the deadly thrust in verbal fence which 
 layed so large a part in the game of politics ; every one that re- 
 ised to float was either an outcast from the best society, or was 
 living to win an eccentric reputation for national obscurantism 
 ad its imaginary accompaniment of honest rustic strength. 
 
 Acquaintance with professors and poets led to a knowledge of 
 ooks ; and it was as necessary to store the latter as the former 
 
 * PUn. H. N. XV. 19 Graeci vitiorum omnium genitores. 
 
 2 Cic. pro Arch. 3. 5 Erat Italia turn plena Graecarum artium ac disciplinarum 
 . . Itaque hunc (Archiam) et Tarentini et Regini et Neapolitani civitate ceterisque 
 raemiis donarunt : et omnes, qui aliquid de ingeniis poterant judicare, cognitione 
 que hospitio dignum existimarunt. 
 
 ^ Cic. de Rep. ii. ig. 34 Videtur insitiva quadam disciplina doctior facta esse 
 vitas. Influxit enim non tenuis quidam e Graecia rivulus in hanc urbem, sed 
 mndantissimus amnis illarum disciplinarum et artium. Cicero is speaking of the 
 :ry earliest Hellenic influences on Rome, but his description is just as appropriate 
 the period which we are considering. 
 
22 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 under the fashionable roof. The first private library in Rome was 
 established by Aemilius Paulus, when he brought home the books 
 that had belonged to the vanquished Perseus ; ^ and it became as 
 much a feature of conquest amongst the highly cultured to bring 
 home a goodly store of literature as to gather objects of art which 
 might merely please the sensuous taste and touch only the outer 
 surface of the mind.^ 
 
 But it was deemed by no means desirable to limit the influences 
 of the new culture to the minds of the mature. There was, indeed, 
 a school of cautious Hellenists that might have preferred this view, 
 and would at any rate have exercised a careful discrimination be- 
 tween those elements of the Greek training which would strengthen 
 the young mind by giving it a wider range of vision and a new 
 gallery of noble lives and those which would lead to mere display, 
 to effeminacy, nay (who could tell ?) to positive depravity. But 
 this could not be the point of view of society as a whole. If the 
 elegant Roman was to be half a Greek, he must learn during the 
 tender and impressionable age to move his limbs and modulate his 
 voice in true Hellenic wise. Hence the picture which Scipio 
 Aemilianus, sane Hellenist and stout P^oman, gazed at with 
 astonished eyes and described in the vigorous and uncompromising 
 language suited to a former censor. " I was told," he said, " that 
 free-born boys and girls went to a dancing school and moved 
 amidst disreputable professors of the art. I could not bring my 
 mind to believe it ; but I was taken to such a school myself, and 
 Good Heavens ! What did I see there ! More than fifty boys and 
 girls, one of them, I am ashamed to say, the son of a candidate for 
 office, a boy wearing the golden boss, a lad not less than twelve 
 years of age. He was jingling a pair of castanets and dancing a 
 step which an immodest slave could not dance with decency."' 
 Such might have been the reflections of a puritan had he entered 
 a modern dancing-academy. We may be permitted to question 
 the immorality of the exhibition thus displayed, but there can be 
 no doubt as to the social ambition which it reveals — an ambition 
 
 1 Plut. Paul. 28. 
 
 2 Sulla brought back the library of Apellicon of Teos, LucuUus the very large 
 one of the kings of Pontus (Plut. Sulla 26 ; Luc. 42 ; Isid. Orig. vi. 5). LucuUus 
 allowed free access to his books. Here we get the germ of the public library. The 
 first that was genuinely public belongs to the close of the Republican era. It was 
 founded by Asinius PoUio in the Atrium Libertatis on the Aventine (Plin. H. N. vii. 
 45 ; Isid. Orig. vi. 5). 
 
 ' Macrob. Sat. iii. 14. 7. 
 
THE COST OF POLITICAL LIFE 23 
 
 which would be perpetuated throughout the whole of the life of the 
 boy with the castanets, which would lead him to set a high value 
 on the polish of everything he called his own — a polish determined 
 by certain rigid external standards and to be attained at any 
 hazard, whether by the ruinous concealment of honest poverty, 
 or the struggle for affluence even by the most questionable 
 means. 
 
 But the burdens on the wealth of the great were by no means 
 limited to those imposed by merely social canons. Political life 
 at Rome had always been expensive in so far as office was unpaid 
 and its tenure implied leisure and a considerable degree of neglect 
 of his own domestic concerns in the patriot who was willing to 
 accept it. But the State had lately taken on itself to increase the 
 financial expenditure which was due to the people without pro- 
 fessing to meet the bill from the public funds. The 'State' at 
 Rome did not mean what it would have meant in such a context 
 amongst the peoples of the Hellenic world. It did not mean that 
 the masses were preying on the richer classes, but that the richer 
 classes were preying on themselves; and this particular form of 
 voluntary self-sacrifice amongst the influential families in the 
 senate was equivalent to the confession that Rome was ceasing to 
 be an Aristocracy and becoming an OUgarchy, was voluntarily 
 placing the claims of wealth on a par with those of birth and 
 merit, or rather was insisting that the latter should not be valid 
 unless they were accompanied by the former. The chief sign of the 
 confession that pohtical advancement might be purchased from the 
 people in a legitimate way, was the adoption of a rule, which was 
 established about the time of the First Punic War, that the cost of 
 the public games should not be defrayed exclusively by the trea- 
 sury.i It was seldom that the people could be brought to contri- 
 bute to the expenses of the exhibitor by subscriptions collected 
 from amongst themselves ; ^ they were the recipients, not the givers 
 of the feast, and the actual donors knew that the exhibition was 
 a contest for favour, that reputations were being won or lost on the 
 merits of the show, and that the successful competitor was laying 
 up a store-house of gratitude which would materially aid his 
 ascent to the highest prizes in the State. The personal cost, if it 
 
 1 Dionys. vii. 71. ^ , <• c ■ ■ 
 
 "They had made contributions in 186 B.C. towards the games ot bcipio 
 Asiaticus (Plin. H. N. xxxiii. 138). 
 
24 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 could not be wholly realised on the existing patrimony of the 
 magistrate, must be assisted by gifts from friends, by loans from 
 money-lenders at exorbitant rates of interest and, worst but readiest 
 of all methods, by contributions, nominally voluntary but really I 
 enforced, from the Itahan allies and the provincials. As early as ' 
 the year 180 the senate had been forced to frame a strong resolution 
 against the extravagance that implied oppression ; ^ but the resolu- 
 tion was really a criticism of the new methods of government ; the 
 roots of the evil (the burden on the magistracy, the increase in the 
 number of the regularly recurring festivals) they neither cared nor 
 ventured to remove. The aedileship was the particular magistracy 
 which was saddled with this expenditui-e on account of its traditional 
 connection with the conduct of the public games ; and although it 
 was neither in its curule nor plebeian form an obligatory step in 
 the scale of the magistracies, yet, as it was held before the praetor- 
 ship and the consulship, it was manifest that the brilliant display 
 given to the people by the occupant of this office might render 
 fruitless the efforts of a less wealthy competitor who had shunned 
 its burdens.^ The games were given jointly by the respective pairs 
 of colleagues,^ the Ludi Romani being under the guidance of the 
 curule,* the Ludi Plebeii under that of the plebeian aediles.^ Had 
 these remained the only annual shows, the cost to the exhibitor, 
 although great, would have been limited. But other festivals, which 
 had once been occasional, had lately been made permanent. The 
 games to Ceres (Cerialia), the remote origins of which may have 
 dated back to the time of the monarchy, first appear as fully 
 established in the year 202 ; ^ the festival to Flora (Floralia) dates 
 from but 238 b.c.,^ but probably did not become annual until 173 ; * 
 while the games to the Great Mother(Jlfegiaiesia)followed by thirteen 
 years the invitation and hospitable reception of that Phrygian god- 
 
 ^ Livy (xl. 44) after describing the senatus consultum, in which occur the words 
 Neve quid ad eos ludos arcesseret, cogeret, acciperet, faceret adversus id senatus 
 :onsultum, quod L. Aemilio Cn. Baebio consulibus de ludis factum esset, adds 
 Decreverat id senatus propter effusos sumptus, factos in ludos Ti. Sempronii aedilis, 
 jui graves non modo Italiae ac sociis Latini nominis sed etiam provinciis externis 
 "uerant, 
 
 ^ The effect was still worse when a rich man avoided it. Cic. de Off, ii. 17. 58 
 i^'itanda tamen suspicio est avaritiae. Mamerco, homini divitissimo, praetermissio 
 ledilitatis consulatus repulsam attulit. Sulla said that the people would not give 
 lira the praetorship because they wished him to be aedile first. They knew that he 
 ;ould obtain African animals for exhibition ( Plut. Sulla 5). 
 
 ^ Cic. in Verr. v. 14. 36. •• Liv. x. 47 ; xxvii. 6. 
 
 ^ Liv. xxiii. 30. 6 Liv. xxx. 39. 
 
 ' Plin. H. N. xviii. 286. s Mommsen Rom. Munzw. p. 645. 
 
POPULAR SPECTACLES 25 
 
 dess by the Romans, and became a regular feature in their calendar 
 in 191.1 This increase in the amenities of the people, every item 
 of which falls within a term of fifty years, is a remarkable feature 
 of the age which followed Rome's assumption of imperial power. 
 It proved that the Roman was willing to bend his austere religion 
 to the purposes of gratification, when he could afford the luxury, 
 that the enjoyment of this luxury was considered a happy means of 
 keeping the people in good temper with itself and its rulers, and 
 that the cost of providing it was considered, not merely as com- 
 patible with the traditions of the existing regime, but as a means 
 of strengthening those traditions by closing the gates of office to 
 the poor. 
 
 The types of spectacle, in which the masses took most delight, 
 were also new and expensive creations. These types were chiefly 
 furnished by the gladiatorial shows and the hunting of wild beasts. 
 Even the former and earlier amusement had had a history of little 
 more than a hundred years. It was believed to be a relic of that 
 realistic view of the after life which lingered in Italy long after it 
 had passed from the more spiritual civilisation of the Greeks. The 
 men who put each other to the sword before the eyes of the sorrow- 
 ing crowd were held to be the retinue which passed with the 
 dead chieftain beyond the grave, and it was from the sombre rites 
 of the Etruscans that this custom of ceremonial slaying was be- 
 lieved to have been transferred to Rome. The first year of the First 
 Punic War witnessed the earliest combat that accompanied a Roman 
 funeral,^ and, although secular enjoyment rapidly took the place of 
 grim funereal appreciation, and the religious belief that underlay 
 the spectacle may soon have passed away, neither the State nor the 
 relatives were supposed to have done due honour to the illustrious 
 dead if his own decease were not followed by the death-struggle of 
 champions from the rival gladiatorial schools, and men who aspired 
 to a decent funeral made due provision for such combats in their 
 wills. The Roman magistrate bowed to the prevalent taste, and 
 displays of gladiators became one of the most familiar features of 
 the aediles' shows. Mihtary sentiment was in its favour, for it was 
 beheved to harden the nerves of the race that had sprung from the 
 
 1 Liv. xxxvi. 36. On these festivals see Warde Fowler The Roman Festivals 
 pp. 72. 91. 70. The Megalesia seem to have fallen to the lot of the curule aediles 
 (Dio. Cass, xliii. 48), the others to have been given indifferently by either pair. 
 
 ' Val. Max. ii. 4. 7 ; Liv. Ep. xvi. It was exhibited in the Forum Boarium 
 by Marcus and Decimus Brutus at the funeral of their father. 
 
26 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 loins of the god of war,i and humane sentiment has never in any 
 age been shocked at the contemporary barbarities which it toler- 
 ates or enjoys. But a certain element of coarseness in the sport, 
 and perhaps the very fact that it was of native Italian growth, might 
 have given it a short shrift, had the cultured classes really possessed 
 the power of regulating the amusements of the public. Leaders of 
 society would have preferred the Greek Agon with its graceful 
 wrestling and its contests in the finer arts. But the Roman public 
 would not be hellenised in this particular, and showed their mood 
 when a musical exhibition was attempted at the triumph of Lucius 
 Anicius Gallus in 167. The audience insisted that the performers 
 should drop their instruments and box with one another.^ This, 
 although not the best, was yet a more tolerable type of what a con- 
 test of skill should be. It was natural, therefore, that the pro- 
 fessional fighting man should become a far more inevitable condition 
 of social and political success than the hunter or the race-horse has 
 ever been with us. Some enterprising members of the nobility soon 
 came to prefer ownership to the hire system and started schools of 
 their own in which the lanista was merely the trainer. A stranger 
 element was soon added to the possessions of a Roman noble by the 
 growing craze for the combats of wild beasts. The first recorded 
 " hunt " of the kind was that given in 186 by Marcus Fulvius at the 
 close of the Aetolian war when lions and panthers were exhibited to 
 the wondering gaze of the people.' Seventeen years later two curule 
 aediles furnished sixty-three African lions and forty bears and 
 elephants for the Circensian games.* These menageries eventually 
 became a public danger and the curule aedile (himself one of the 
 chief offenders) was forced to frame an edict specifying the com- 
 pensation for damage that might be committed by wild beasts in 
 their transit through Italy or their residence within the towns.' 
 The obligation of wealth to supply luxuries for the poor — a splendid 
 feature of ancient civilisation in which it has ever taken precedence 
 of that of the modern world — was recognised with the utmost frank- 
 ness in the Rome of the day ; but it was an obligation that had 
 passed the limits at which it could be cheerfully performed as the 
 
 ' Compare Livy's description (xli. 2o) of the adoption of Roman gladiatorial 
 shows by Antiochus Epiphanes — Armorum studium plerisque juvenum accendit. 
 
 ' Polyb. XXX. 13. * Liv. xxxix. 22. * Liv. xliv. 18. 
 
 " Dig. 21. i. 40-42 (from the edict of the curule aediles) Ne quis canem, verrem 
 vel minorem aprum, lupum, ursum, pantheram, leonem . . . qua vulgo iter fiet, ita 
 habuisse velit, ut cuiquam nocere damnumve dare possit. 
 
ATTEMPTS TO CHECK LUXURY 27 
 
 duty of the patriot or the patron ; it had reached a stage when its 
 demoralising effects, both to giver and to receiver, were patent to 
 every seeing eye, but when criticism of its vices could be met by the 
 conclusive rejoinder that it was a vital necessity of the existing poli- 
 tical situation. 1 
 
 \The review which we have given of the enormous expenditure 
 created by the social and political appetites of the day leads up to 
 the consideration of two questions which, though seldom formulated 
 or faced in their naked form, were ever present in the minds of the 
 classes who were forced to deem themselves either the most re- 
 sponsible authors, or the most illustrious victims, of the .existing 
 standards both of politics and society. Thes^uestions weref'Coulo^ 
 the exhausting drain be stopped?" and ''If it could not, how was^ 
 it to be supplied ? " A city in a state of high fever will always , 
 produce the would-be doctor; but the curious fact about the RomeV 
 of this and other days is that the doctor was so often the patienti 
 in another form. Just as in the government of the provinces the)* 
 scandals of individual rule were often met by the severest legislation^ 
 proceeding from the very body which had produced the evil-doers,\ 
 so when remedies were suggested for the social evils of the city, the/ 
 Vfeenate, in spite of its tendency to individual transgression, generally^ 
 displayed the possession of a collective conscience. The men who 
 formulated the standard of purity and self-restraint might be jgw 
 in number ; but, except they displayed the irritating activity and 
 the uncompromising methods of a Cato, they generally secured the 
 s upport o f their peers, and the sterner the censor, the mo re glad ly 
 was he hailea aslin ornament to the order. This guardian of 
 morals still issued his edicts against delicacies of the table, foreign 
 perfumes and expensive houses ; ^ as late as the year 169 people would 
 hastily put out their lights when it was reported that Tiberius 
 Sempronius Graccus was coming up the street on his return from 
 supper, lest they should fall under the suspicion of untimely revelry,' 
 and the sporadic activity of the censorship will find ample illustra- 
 tion in the future chapters of our work. Degradation from the 
 various orders of the State was still a consequence of its animad- 
 
 1 Cic. de Off. ii. 17. 60 Tota igitur ratio talium largitionum genere vitiosa est, 
 temporibus necessaria. He adds the pious but unattainable wish Tamen ipsa et ad 
 facultates accomodanda et mediocritate moderanda est. Compare the remarks of 
 Pohlmann on the subject in his Geschichtt des antiken Communismus und Sozialismus 
 ii. 2. p. 471. 
 
 "Mommsen Staatsr. ii., p. 382. ' Plut. Ti. Gracch. 14. 
 
28 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 versions; but a milder, more universal and probably far more 
 eificacious check on luxuryA;^system, pursued by Cato, of adopt- 
 ing an excessive rating for articBs of value ^ and thus of shifting the 
 incidence of taxation from the artisan and farmer to the shoulders 
 of the r jfhpat. rla ss^ — had been taken out of its hands by the 
 complete cessation of direct imposts after the Third Macedonian 
 War.3 
 
 Meanwhile sumptuary laws continued to be promulgated from 
 the Rostra and accepted by the people. All that are known to 
 have been initiated or to have been considered valid after the close 
 of the great wars have but one object — an attack on the expenses 
 of the table, a form of sensuous enjoyment which, on account of 
 the ease and barbaric abundance with which wealth may vaunt 
 itself in this domain, was particularly in vogue amongst the upper 
 classes in Rome. Other forms of extravagance seem for the time to 
 have been left untouched by legislation, for the Oppian law which 
 had been due to the strain of the Second Punic War had been 
 repealed after a jfierce struggle in 195, and the Roman ladies might 
 now adorn themselves with more than half an ounce of gold, wear 
 robes of divers colours and ride in their carriages through any 
 street they pleased.* The first enactment which attempted to 
 control the wastefulness of the table was an Orchian law of 181, 
 limiting the number of guests that might be invited to entertain- 
 ments. Cato was consistent in opposing the passing of the measure 
 and in resisting its repeal. He recognised a futile law when he saw 
 it, but he did not wish this futility to be admitted.* Twenty years 
 later ^ a Fannian law grew out of a decree of the senate which had 
 enjoined that the chief men (principes) of the State should take 
 an oath before the consuls not to exceed a certain limit of expense 
 in the banquets given at the Megalesian Games. Strengthened 
 by this expression of opinion the consuls then went to the people 
 
 ' Liv. xxxix. 44 ; Plut. Cat. Maj. i8. 
 
 ^ Nitzsch Die Gracchen, p. 128. 
 
 ' Cic. de Off. ii. 22. 76 (Paullus) tantum in aerarium pecuniae invexit, ut unius 
 imperatoris praeda finem attulerit tributorum. A deterrent to luxury could still have 
 been created by imposing heavy harbour-dues on articles of value ; but this would 
 have required legislation. Nothingjis known about the Republican tariff at Italian 
 ports. The percentage may have been uniform for all articles. 
 
 * Liv. xxxiv. cc. 1-8 ; Val. Max. ix. i. 3 ; Tac. Ann. iii. 33. 
 
 ''Macrob. Sat. iii. 17; Festus pp. 201, 242; Schol. Bob. p. 310; Meyer Orat. 
 Rom. Fragm. p. gi. 
 
 " This date (161) is given by Pliny (H. N. a. 139) ; Macrobius (Sat. iii. 17. 3) 
 places the law in 159. 
 
SUMPTUARY LAWS 29 
 
 with a measure which prescribed more harrassing details than the 
 Orchian law. The new enactment actually determined the value 
 and nature of the eatables whose consumption was allowed. It 
 permitted one hundred asses to be spent on the days of the Roman 
 Games, the Plebeian Games and the SaturnaUa, thirty asses on 
 certain other festival occasions, and but ten asses (less than twice 
 the daily pay of a Roman soldier) on every other meal throughout 
 the year ; it forbade the serving of any fowl but a single hen, and 
 that not fattened; it enjoined the exclusive consumption of native 
 wine.^ This enactment was strengthened eighteen years later by a 
 Didian law, which included in the threatened penalties not only the 
 giver of the feast which violated the prescribed limits, but also the 
 guests who were present at such a banquet. It also compelled or 
 induced the Italian allies to accept the provisions of the Fannian 
 law 2 — an unusual step which may show the belief that a luxury 
 similar to that of Rome was weakening the resources of the con- 
 federacy, on whose strength the leading state was so dependent, or 
 which may have been induced by the knowledge that members of 
 the Roman nobility were taking holiday trips to country towns, to 
 enjoy the delights which were prohibited at home and to waste 
 their money on Italian caterers.^ 
 
 The frequency of such legislation, which we shall find renewed 
 once again before the epoch of the reforms of Sulla * seems to prove 
 its ineffectiveness,* and indeed the standard of comfort which it desired 
 to enjoin was wholly incompatible with the circumstances of the 
 age. The desire to produce uniformity* of standard had always 
 been an end of Roman as of Greek sumptuary regulation, but what 
 type of uniformity could be looked for in a community where the 
 
 ' Gell. ii. 24 ; Macrob. Sat. iii. 17 ; Plin. H. N. x. 139 ; Tertull. AJ>ol. vi. The 
 ten asses of this law are the Fanni centussis misellus of Lucilius. 
 
 ' It seems that we must assume formal acceptance on the part of the allies in 
 accordance with the principle that Rome could not legislate for her confederacy, a 
 principle analogous to that which forbade her to force her franchise on its members 
 (Cic. pro Balbo 8. 20 and 21). 
 
 ^ We may compare the enactment of 193 B.C., which was produced by the dis- 
 covery that Roman creditors escaped the usury laws by using Italians as their 
 agents (Liv. xxxv. 7 M. Sempronius tribunus plebis . . . plebem rogavit plebesque 
 scivit ut cum sociis ac nomine Latino creditae pecuniae jus idem quod cum civibus 
 Romanis esset). 
 
 * The Lex Licinia, which is attributed by Macrobius (l.c.) to P. Licinius Crassus 
 Dives, perhaps belongs either to his praetorship (104 B.C.) or to his consulship 
 (97 B.C.). 
 
 " Gellius (ii. 24), in speaking of Sulla's experiments, says of the older laws 
 Legibus istis situ atque senio obliteratis. 
 
 ' Exaequatio (Liv. xxxiv. 4). 
 
30 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 extremes of wealth and poverty were beginning to be so strongly 
 marked, wh ere capital w as accumulating in the hands of the great 
 noble and the great trader and being wholly withdrawn from those 
 of the free-bom peasant and artisan ? The restriction of useless con- 
 sumption was indeed favourable to the more productive employment 
 of capital ; but we shall soon see that this productive use, which 
 had as its object the deterioration of land by pasturage and the 
 purchase of servile labour, was as detrimental to the free citizen as 
 the most reckless extravagance could have been. There is no ques- 
 tion, however, that both the sumptuary laws and the censorian ordin- 
 ances of the period did attempt to attain an economic as well as a 
 social end ; and, however mistaken their methods may have been, 
 they showed some appreciation of the industrial evils of the time. 
 The provision of the Fannian law in favour of native wines ^ suggests 
 the desire to help the small cultivator who had substituted vine- 
 growing for the cultivation of cereals, and foreshadows the protective 
 legislation of the Ciceronian period.^ Much of this legislation, too, 
 was animated by the "mercantile" theory that a State is im- 
 poverished by the export of the precious metals to foreign lands ' 
 — a view which found expression in a definite enactment of an earlier 
 period which had forbidden gold or silver to be paid to the Celtic 
 tribes in the north of Italy in exchange for the wares or slaves 
 which they sold to Roman merchants.* 
 
 ^Another series of laws aimed at securing the purity of an electo- 
 rate exposed to the danger of corruption by the overwhelming in- 
 fluence of wealth. "~feaws against bribery, unknown in an earlier 
 period,^ become painfully frequent from the date at which Rome came 
 into contact with the riches of the East. Six years after the close of 
 the great Asiatic campaign the people were asked, on the authority 
 of the senate, to sanction more than one act which was directed 
 
 ' P. 2g. * Cic. de Rep. iii. g. i6 ; see p. 80. 
 
 ' Compare Tac. Ann. iii. 53. The Emperor Tiberius here speaks of Ilia femin- 
 arum propria, quis lapidum causa pecuniae nostrae ad externas aut hostilis gentes 
 transferuntur. 
 
 * The prohibition belongs to the year 229 B.C. (Zonar. viii. 19). For other 
 prohibitions of the same kind dating from a period later than that which we are 
 considering see Voigt in Iwan-Miiller's Handbuch iv. 2, p. 376 n. 95. 
 
 ' Earlier enactments had been directed against canvassing, but not against 
 bribery. The simplicity of the fifth century E.c. was illustrated by the law 5iat a 
 candidate should not whiten his toga with chalk (Liv. iv. 25 ; 433 B.C.). The Lex 
 Poetelia of 358 B.C. (Liv. vii. 16) vi^as directed against personal solicitation by novi 
 homines. Some law of ambitus is known to Plautus (Amph. prol. 73 ; cf. Trinumm. 
 iv. 3. 26). See Rein Criminalrecht p. 706. 
 
THE MOTIVE FOR GAIN 31 
 
 against the undue influence exercised at elections ; i in 166 fresh 
 scandals called for the consideration of the Council of State ; ^ and 
 the year 159 saw the birth of another enactment.' Yet the capital 
 penalty, which seems to have been the consequence of the transgres- 
 sion of at least one of these laws,* did not deter candidates from stak- 
 ing their citizenship on their success. The still-surviving custom of 
 clientship made the object of largesses difficult to establish, and the 
 secrecy of the ballot, which had been irttfoduced for elections in 139, 
 made it impossible to prove that the suspicious gift had been effective 
 and thus to construct a convincing case against the donor. 
 
 The moral control exercised by the magistrate and the sumptu- 
 ary or criminal ordinances expressed in acts of Parhament might 
 serve as temporary palliatives to certain pronounced evils of the 
 moment ; but they were powerless to check the extravagance of an 
 expenditure which was sanctioned by custom and in some respects 
 actually enforced by law.* One of the greatest of the practical 
 needs of the new Roman was to increase his income in every way 
 that might be deemed legitimate by a society which, even in its 
 best days, had never been overscrupulous in its exploitation of the 
 poor and had been wont to illustrate the sanctity of contract by 
 visible examples of grinding oppression. The nature and intensity 
 of the race for wealth differed with the needs of the anxious spend- 
 thrift ; and in respect both to needs and to means of satisfaction 
 the upper middle class was in a far more favourable position than 
 its noble governors. It could spend its unfettered energies in the 
 pursuit of the profits which might be derived from public contracts, 
 trade, banking and money-lending, while it was not forced to submit 
 to the drain created by the canvass for office and the exorbitant de- 
 mands made by the electorate on the pecuniary resources of the can- 
 didate. The brilliancy of the life of the mercantile class, with its 
 :;areless luxury and easy indifference to expenditure, set a standard 
 For the nobility which was at once galling and degrading. They 
 were induced to apply the measure of wealth even to members of 
 their own order, and regarded it as inevitable that any one of their 
 
 'Liv. xl. 19 Leges de ambitu consules ex auctoritate senatus ad populum 
 ulerunt. This was the lex Cornelia Baebia and that it referred to pecuniary cor- 
 uption is known from a fragment of Cato (ap. Non. vii. 19, s.v. largi, Cato lege 
 Baebia : pecuniam inlargibo tibi). 
 
 2 Obsequens Ixxi. ' Liv. Ep. xlvii. 
 
 * Polyb. vi. 56 irapic fiiv Kapxri^oy^o^' SSpo <pavepas StS6vTes Ka/iPdyova-i ras apxds, 
 raph Se 'Pa/xaiois Bivaros ^(Tti irepl rovTO TrpiJffTi/ioi'. 
 
 » P. 23. 
 
32 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 peers, whose patrimony had dwindled, should ifiU but a subordinate 
 place both in politics and society ; ^ while the means which they 
 were sometimes forced to adopt in order to vie with the wealth of 
 the successful contractor and promoter were, if hardly less sound 
 from a moral point of view, at least far more questionable from a 
 purely legal standpoint. 
 
 A fraction of the present wealth which was in the possession of 
 some of the leading families of the nobility may have been purely 
 adventitious, the result of the lucky accident of command and con- 
 quest amidst a wealthy and pliant people. The spoils of war were, 
 it is true, not for the general but for the State ; yet he exercised 
 great discretionary power in dealing with the movable objects, 
 which in the case of Hellenic or Asiatic conquest formed one of the 
 richest elements in the prize, and the average commander is not 
 likely to have displayed the self-restraint and public spirit of the 
 destroyer of Corinth.^ Public and military opinion would permit 
 the victor to retain an ample share of the fruits of his prowess, and 
 this would be increased by a type of contribution to which he had 
 a peculiar and unquestioned claim. This consisted in the honorary 
 offerings made by states, who found themselves at the feet of the 
 victor and were eager to attract his pity and to enlist on their behalf 
 his influence with the Roman government. Instances of such offerings 
 are the hundred and fourteen golden crowns which were borne in the 
 triumph of Titus Quinctius Flamininus,^ those of two hundred and 
 twelve pounds' weight shown in the triumph of Manlius,* and the great 
 golden wreath of one hundred and fifty pounds which had been pre- 
 sented by the Ambraciots to Nobilior.^ But the time had not yet been 
 reached when the general on a campaign, or even the governor of a 
 district which was merely disturbed by border raids, could calmly 
 demand hard cash as the equivalent of the precious metal wrought 
 into this useless form, and when the " coronary gold " was to be one 
 of the regular perquisites of any Roman governor who claimed to 
 have achieved military success.^ Nor is it likely that the triumph- 
 ant general of this period melted down the offerings which he 
 
 ' The position of the ruined patrician will be fully illustrated in the following 
 pages when we deal with the careers of Scaurus and of Sulla. 
 
 '' P- 19- * Liv. xxxiv. 52. 
 
 ^ Liv. xxxix. 7. 5 Liv. xxxviii. 9. 
 
 ° For the later history of the aurum coronarium see Marquardt Staatsverw. ii. p. 
 295. It was developed from the triumpkales coronae (Festus p. 367) and is described 
 as gold Quod triumphantibus ... a victis gentibus datur and as imposed by com- 
 manders Propter concessam vitam (al. immunitatem) (Serv. Ad. Aen. viii. 721). 
 
THE PATH TO WEALTH 33 
 
 might dedicate in temples or reserve for the gallery of his house, 
 and we must conclude that the few members of the nobility who 
 had conducted the great campaigns were but slightly enriched by 
 the offerings which helpless peoples had laid at their feet. It would 
 be almost truer to say that the great influx of the precious metals 
 had increased the difficulties of their position ; for, if the gold or 
 silver took the form of artistic work which remained in their posses- 
 sion, it but exaggerated the ideal to which their standard of life 
 was expected to conform ; and if it assumed the shape of the enor- 
 mous amount of specie which was poured into the coffers of the 
 State or distributed amongst the legionaries, its chief effects were 
 the heightening of prices and a showy appearance of a vast 
 increase of wealth which corresponded to no real increase in 
 production. 
 
 But, whatever the effects of the metallic prizes of the great 
 campaigns, these prizes could neither have benefited the members 
 of the nobility as a whole nor, in the days of comparative peace 
 which had followed the long epoch of war with wealthy powers, 
 could they be contemplated as a permanent source of future capital 
 or income. When the representative of the official caste looked 
 round for modes of fruitful investment which might increase his 
 revenues, his chances at first sight appeared to be limited by legal 
 restrictions which expressed the supposed principles of his class. A 
 Clodian law enacted at the beginning of the Second Punic War had 
 provided that no senator or senator's son should own a ship of a 
 burden greater than three hundred amphorae. The intention of 
 the measure was to prohibit members of the governing class from 
 taking part in foreign trade, as carriers, as manufacturers, or as 
 participants in the great business of the contract for corn which 
 placed provincial grain on the Roman market ; and the ships of 
 small tonnage which they were allowed to retain were intended to 
 furnish them merely with the power of transporting to a convenient 
 market the produce of their own estates in Italy.'^ The restriction 
 was not imposed in a self-regarding spirit ; it was odious to the 
 nobility, and, as it was supported by Flaminius, must have been 
 popular with the masses, who were blind to the fact that the 
 restriction of a senator's energies to agriculture would be infinitely 
 more disastrous to the well-being of the average citizen than the 
 
 1 Liv. xxi. 63 (218 B.C.) Id satis habitum ad fructus ex agris vectandos ; quaestus 
 omnis patribus indecorus visus. 
 
34 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 expenditure of those energies in trade. The restriction may have 
 received the support of the growing merchant class, who were 
 perhaps pleased to be rid of the competition of powerful rivals, 
 and it certainly served, externally at least, to mark the distinction 
 between the man of large industrial enterprises and the man whose 
 official rank was supported by landed wealth — a distinction which, 
 in the shape of the contrast drawn between knights and senators, 
 appears at every turn in the history of the later Republic. But, 
 whatever the immediate motives for the passing of the measure, a 
 great and healthy principle lay behind it. It was the principle that 
 considerations of foreign policy should not be directly controlled or 
 hampered by questions of trade, that the policy of the State should 
 not become the sport of the selfish vagaries of capital. The spirit 
 thus expressed was directly inimical to the interests of the merchant, 
 the contractor and the tax-farmer. How inimical it was could not 
 yet be clearly seen ; for the transmarine interests of Rome had not 
 at the time attained a development which invited the mastery 
 of conquered lands by the Roman capitalist. But, whether this 
 Clodian law created or merely formulated the antithesis between 
 land and trade, between Italian and provincial profits, it is yet cer- 
 tain that this antithesis was one of the most powerful of the ani- 
 mating factors of Roman history for the better part of the two 
 centuries which were to follow the enactment. It produced the 
 conflict between a policy of restricted enterprise, pursued for the 
 good of the State and the subject, and a policy of expansion which 
 obeyed the interests of capital, between a policy of cautious pro- 
 tection and that madness of imperialism which is ever associated 
 with barbarism, brigandage or trade. 
 
 But, if we inquire whether this enactment attained its ostensible 
 object of completely shutting out senators from the profits of any 
 enterprise that could properly be described as commercial, we shall 
 find an affirmative answer to be more than dubious. The law was 
 a dead letter when Cicero indicted VeiTes,i but its demise may have 
 been reached through a long and slow process of decline. But, even 
 if the provisions of the law had been adhered to throughout the 
 period which we are considering, the avenue to wealth derived from 
 business intercourse with the provinces would not necessarily have 
 been closed to the official class. We shall soon see that the 
 
 ' It was antiqua et mortua (Cic. in Verr. v. i8. 45). 
 
THE NOBLES AS TRADERS 35 
 
 companies which were formed for undertaking the state-contracts 
 probably permitted shares to be held by individuals who never 
 appeared in the registered list of partners at all,i and we know that 
 to hold a share in a great public concern was considered one of the 
 methods of business which did not subject the participant to the 
 taint of a vulgar commercialism. ^ And, if the senator chose to 
 indulge more directly in the profits of transmarine commerce, to 
 what extent was he really hindered by the provisions of the law ? 
 He might not own a ship of burden, but his freedmen might sail 
 to any port on the largest vessels, and who could object if the 
 returns which the dependant owed his lord were drawn from the 
 profits of commerce? Again there was no prohibition against 
 loans on bottomry, and Cato had increased his wealth by becoming 
 through his freedman a member of a maritime company, each 
 partner in which had but a limited liability and the prospect of 
 enormous gains.' The example of this energetic money-getter also 
 illustrates many ways in which the nobleman of business tastes 
 could increase his profits without extending his entei-prises far 
 from the capital. It was possible to exploit the growing taste in 
 country villas, in streams and lakes and natural woods ; to buy a 
 Ukely spot for a small price, let it at a good rental, or sell it at 
 a larger price. The ownership of house property within the town, 
 which grew eventually into the monopoly of whole blocks and 
 streets by such a man as Crassus,* was in every way consistent with 
 the possession of senatorial rank. It was even possible to be a 
 slave-dealer without loss of dignity, at least if one transacted the 
 sordid details of the business through a slave. The young and 
 promising boy required but a year's training in the arts to enable 
 the careful buyer to make a large profit by his sale.* Yet such 
 methods must have been regarded by the nobility as a whole as 
 merely subsidiary means of increasing their patrimony : and, in 
 spite of the fact that Cato took the view that agriculture should 
 
 ip.44. 
 
 " Cicero (Parad. 6. 46) speaks of those Qui honeste rem quaerunt mercaturis 
 feciendis, operis_dandis, publicis sumendis. Compare the category of banausic trades 
 in de Off. i. 42. 150, although in the Paradoxa the contrast is rather that between 
 honest and vicious methods of money-making. Deloume (Les manieurs d'argent d 
 Rome pp. 58 ff.) believes that the fortune of Cicero swelled through participation in 
 publica. 
 
 spiut. Cato Maj. zi. ^ Plut. Crass. 2. 
 
 " Plut. Cato Maj. 21. Cato employed this method of training as a means of 
 increasing the peculium of his own slaves. But even the pecuUum technically be- 
 longed to the master, and it is obvious that the slave-trainer might have been used 
 by others as a mere instrument for the master's gain. 
 
36 A HISTORY OF ROME ' 
 
 be an amusement rather than a business,^ there can be no doubt 
 that the staple of the wealth of the official class was still to be 
 found in the acres of Italy. It was not, however, the wealth of 
 the moderate homestead which was to be won from a careful tillage 
 of the fields ; it was the wealth which, as we shall soon see, was 
 associated with the slave-capitalist, the overseer, a foreign method 
 of cultivation on the model of the grand plantation-systems of the 
 East, and a belief in the superior value of pasturage to tillage 
 which was to turn many a populous and fertile plain into a wilder- 
 ness of danger and desolation. 
 
 But, strive as he would, there was many a nobleman who found 
 that his expenditure could not be met by dabbling in trade where 
 others plunged, or by the revenues yielded by the large tracts of 
 Italian soil over which he claimed exclusive powers. The play- 
 wright of the age has figured Indigence as the daughter of Luxury ^ ; 
 and a still more terrible child was to be born in the Avarice which 
 sprang from the useless cravings and fierce competitions of the 
 time.^ The desire to get and to hold had ever been a Roman 
 vice ; but it had also been the unvarying assumption of the Roman 
 State, and the conviction of the Roman official — a conviction so 
 deeply seated and spontaneous as to form no ground for self-con- 
 gratulation — that the lust for acquisition should limit itself to the 
 domain of private right, and never cross the rigid barrier which 
 divided that domain from the sphere of wealth and power which 
 the city had committed to its servant as a solemn trust. The 
 better sort of overseer was often found in the crabbed man of 
 business — a Cato, for example — who would never waive a right of 
 his own and protected those of his dependants with similar tenacity 
 and passion. The honour which prevailed in the commercial code 
 at home was considered so much a matter of course in all dealings 
 with the foreign world, that the State scorned to scrutinise the ex- 
 penditure of its ministers and was spared the disgrace of a system 
 
 ^ Plut. I.e. aTTTtf/ieyos Se (fvi/rovtitrGpov iropifffiov r^v /zej/ yeatpytay /laWoy jjyiiTO 
 Stayuy^v ^ irpSfTodoy, 
 
 ^ Plaut. Trinumm. Prol. 8 
 
 Primum mihi Plautus nomen Luxuriae indidit : 
 
 Turn banc mihi gnatam esse voluit Inopiam. 
 ' Liv. xxxiv. 4 (Cato's speech in defence of the Oppian law) Saepe me querentera 
 de feminarum, saepe de virorum, nee de privatorum modo, sed etiam magistratuum 
 sumptibus audistis ; diversisque duobus vitiis, avaritia et luxuria, civitatem laborare. 
 Compare Sallust's impressions of a later age {Cat. 3) Pro pudore, pro abstinentia, 
 pro virtute, audacia, largitio, avaritia vigebant. 
 
COMPARATIVE PURITY OF ADMINISTRATION 37 
 
 of public audit, i Even in this age, which is regarded by the ancient 
 historians as maramg the beginning of the decline in public virtue, 
 Polybius could contrast the attitude of suspicion towards the guar- 
 dians of the State, which was the characteristic of the official life of 
 his own unhappy country, with the well-founded confidence which 
 Rome reposed in the honour of her ministers, and could tell the 
 world that " if but a talent of money were entrusted to a magis- 
 trate of a Greek state, ten auditors, as many seals and twice as 
 many witnesses are required for the security of the bond ; yet even 
 so faith is not observed ; while the Roman in an official or diplo- 
 matic post, who handles vast sums of money, adheres to his duty 
 through the mere moral obligation of the oath which he has sworn '' ; 
 that " amongst the Romans the corrupt official is as rare a portent as 
 is the financier with clean hands amongst other peoples "} When 
 the elder Afiicanus tore up the account books of his brother — books 
 which recorded the passage of eighteen thousand talents from an 
 Asiatic king to a Roman general and from him to the Roman 
 State'' — he was imparting a lesson in confidence, which was imme- 
 diately accepted by the senate and people. And it seems that, so 
 far as the expenditure of public moneys was concerned, this con- 
 fidence continued to be justified. It is true that Cato had furiously 
 impugned the honour of commanders in the matter of the distri- 
 bution of the prizes of war amongst the soldiers and had drawn 
 a bitter contrast between private and official thieves. " The 
 former," he said, " pass their lives in thongs and iron fetters, the 
 latter in purple and gold."^ But there were no fixed rules of 
 practice which guided such a distribution, and a commander, other- 
 wise honest, might feel no qualms of conscience in exercising a 
 selective taste on his own behalf. On the other hand, deliberate 
 misappropriation of the public funds seems to have been seldom 
 suspected or at least seldom made the subject of judicial cognisance, 
 and for many years after a standing court was established for the 
 trial of extortion no similar tribunal was thought necessary for the 
 crime of peculation.* Apart from the long, tortuous and ineiFective 
 trial of the Scipios,* no question of the kind is known to have been 
 raised since Manius Acihus Glabrio, the conqueror of Antiochus and 
 
 1 Polyb. vi. 56. 2 Polyb. xxiv. 9. 
 
 3 Cato ap. Gell. xi. i8. i8. The speech was one De praeda mihtibus dividenda. 
 * We first hear of a standing court for peculatus in 66 B.C. (Cic. pro Cluent. 53. 
 147). It was probably established by Sulla. 
 
 ° Rein Criminalr. pp. 680 ff. ; Mommsen Rom. Forsch. n. pp. 437 it. 
 
38 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 the Aetolians, competed for the censorship. Then a story, based on 
 the existence of the indubitable wealth which he was employing 
 with a lavish hand to win the favour of the people, was raked up 
 against him by some jealous members of the nobility. It was pro- 
 fessed that some money and booty, found in the camp of the king, 
 had never been exhibited in the triumph nor deposited in the 
 treasury. The evidence of legates and military tribunes was in- 
 vited, and Cato, himself a competitor for the censorship, was ready 
 to testify that gold and silver vases, which he had seen in the 
 captured camp, had not been visible in the triumphal procession. 
 Glabrio waived his candidature, but the people were unwilling to 
 convict and the prosecution was abandoned.^ Here again we are 
 confronted by the old temptation of curio-hunting, which the no- 
 bility deemed indecent in so " new " a man as Glabrio ; the evidence 
 of Cato — the only testimony which proved dangerous — did not 
 establish the charge that money due to the State had been inter- 
 cepted by a Roman consul. 
 
 But the regard for the property of the State was unfortunately 
 not extended to the property of its clients. Even before the pro- 
 vinces had yielded a prey rendered easy by distance and irresponsi- 
 bility, Italian cities had been forced to complain of the violei;ce and 
 rapacity of Roman commanders quartered in their neighbourhood,^ 
 and the passive silence with which the Praenestines bore the im- 
 moderate requisitions of a consul, was a fatal guarantee of impunity 
 which threatened to alter for ever the relations of these free allies 
 to the protecting power.^ But provincial commands offered greater 
 temptations and a far more favourable field for capricious tyranny ; 
 for here the exactions of the governor were neither repudiated by 
 an oath of office nor at first even forbidden by the sanctions of a 
 law. Requisitions could be made to meet the needs of the moment, 
 and these needs were naturally interpreted to suit the cravings and 
 the tastes of the governor of the moment.* C^b not only cut down 
 
 ' Liv. xxxvii. 57 and 58 (190 B.C.). 
 
 ^ See especially the case of Pleminius, Scipio's lieutenant at Locri (204 B.C.), 
 who, after a committee had reported on the charge, was conveyed to Rome but died 
 in bonds before the popular court had pronounced judgment (Liv. xxix. 16-22). 
 
 'Liv. xlii. I (173 B.C.) Silentium, nimis aut modestumaut timidum Prae- 
 nestmorum, jus, velut probato exemplo, magistratibus fecit graviorum in dies talis 
 generis imperiorum. 
 
 ■* For such requisitions see Plut. Cato Maj. 6 (of Cato's government of Sardinia) 
 Tuv Ttph auTOU (TTpaTTiyai/ eloie6Tuy xPV<r^<^t Kal axrivdinaffL Siiiiaaiais Kol K\ivais (cal 
 iliartois, iroWp Se SfpaTrfia Kal (plhav irX^flei /to! irepl SeTwo Sanivais Kal irapaa-Kfvius 
 Papvy6i/Tti>y, 
 
u 
 
 EXTORTION IN THE PROVINCES 39 
 
 he expenses that had been arbitrarily impbsed on the unhappy 
 natives of Sardinia,^ but seems to have been the author of a definite 
 law which fixed a limit to such requisitions in the future.^ But it 
 was easier to fi'ame an ordinance than to guarantee its observation, 
 and, at a time when the surrounding world was seething with war, 
 the regulations made for a peaceful province could not touch the 
 actions of a victorious commander who was following up the results 
 of conquest. Complaints began to pour in on every hand — from 
 the Ambraciots of Greece, the Cenomani of Gaul ' — and the senate 
 did its best, either by its own cognisance or by the creation of a 
 commission of investigation, to meet the claims of the dependent 
 peoples. A kind of rude justice was the result, but it was much 
 too rude to meet an evil which was soon seen to be developing into 
 a trade of systematic oppression. A novel step was taken when 
 in 171 delegates from the two Spains appeared in the Curia to 
 complain of the avarice and insolence of their Roman governors. 
 A praetor was commissioned to choose from the senatorial order five 
 of such judges as were wont to be selected for the settlement of in- 
 ternational disputes (recuperatvres), to sit in judgment on each of 
 the indicted governors,* and the germ of a regular court for what 
 had now become a regular offence was thus developed. The further 
 and more shameful confession, that the court should be permanent 
 and interpret a definite statute, was soon made, and the Calpurnian 
 law of 1^9^ was the first of that long series of enactments for extortion 
 which mark the futility of corrective measures in the face of a weak 
 system of legal, and a still weaker system of moral, control. Trials 
 for extortion soon became the plaything of politics, the favourite 
 arena for the exercise of the energies of a young and rising poli- 
 tician, the favourite weapon with which old family feuds might be 
 at once revenged and perpetuated. They were soon destined to 
 gain a still greater significance as furnishing the criteria of the 
 methods of administration which the State was expected to employ, 
 as determining the respective rights of the administrator and the 
 
 ^Liv. xxxii. 27 Sumptus, quos in cultum praetorum socii facere soliti erant, 
 circumcisi aut sublati (ig8 BX.). 
 
 2 The Lex de Termessibus (a charter of freedom given to Termessus in Pisidia in 
 71 B.C.) enjoins (ii. 1. 15) Nei . . . quis magistratus . . . inperato, quo quid magis 
 iei dent praebeant ab ieisve auferatur nisei quod eos ex lege Porcia dare praebere 
 oportet oportebit. This Porcian law was probably the work of Cato (Rein Criminalr. 
 P- 607). 
 
 s Liv. xxxviii. 43 ; xxxix. 3 ; Rein, I.e. " Liv. xlui. 2. 
 
 = Cic. Brut. 27. 106 ; de Off. ii. 21. 75 ; cf. in Verr. iii. 84. 195 ; iv. 25. 56. 
 
40 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 capitalist to guide the destinies of the inhabitants of a dependent 
 district. Their manifold political significance destroys our con- 
 fidence in their judgments, and we can seldom tell whether the 
 acquittal or the condemnation which these courts pronounced was 
 justified on the evidence adduced. But there can be no question of 
 the evil that lay behind this legislative and judicial activity. The 
 motive which led men to assume administrative posts abroad was 
 in many cases thoroughly selfish and mean, — the desire to acquire 
 wealth as rapidly as was consistent with keeping on the safe side of a 
 not very exacting law. No motive of this kind can ever be universal 
 in a political society, and in Rome we cannot even pronounce it to 
 be general. Power and distinction attracted the Roman as much 
 as wealth, and some governors were saved from temptation by the 
 colossal fortunes which they already possessed. But how early it 
 had begun to operate in the minds of many is shown by the eager- 
 ness which, as we shall see, was soon to be displayed by rival con- 
 suls for the conduct of a war that might give the victor a 
 prolonged control over the rich cities which had belonged to the 
 kingdom of Pergamon, if it is not proved by the strange unwilling- 
 ness which magistrates had long before exhibited to assume some 
 commands which had been entrusted to their charge.^ 
 
 A suspicion of another type of abuse of power, more degrading 
 though not necessarily more harmful than the plunder of subjects, 
 had begun to be raised in the minds of the people and the govern- 
 ment. It was held that a Roman might be found who would sell 
 the supposed interests of his country to a foreign potentate, or at 
 any rate accept a present which might or might not influence his 
 judgment. A commissioner to Illyria had been suspected of pocket- 
 ing money offered him by the potentates of that district in 171,^ and 
 the first hint was given of that shattering of public confidence in 
 the integrity of diplomatists which wrought such havoc in the 
 foreign pohtics of the period which forms the immediate subject 
 
 ^ Liy. xli. 15. (176 B.C.) Duo (praetores) deprecati sunt ne in provincias irent, 
 M. Popillius in Sardinian! : Gracchum earn provinciam pacare &c. . . . Probata 
 Popillii excusatio est. P. Licinius Crassus sacrificiis se impediri soUemnibus ex- 
 cusabat, ne in provinciam iret. Citerior Hispania obvenerat. Ceterum aut ire 
 jussus aut jurare pro contione soUemni sacrificio se prohiberi . . . Praetores ambo 
 in eadem verba jurarunt. I have seen the passage cited as a proof that governors 
 would not go to unproductive provinces ; but Sardinia was a fruitful sphere for 
 plunder, and the excuses may have been genuine. That of Popillius seems to 
 have been positively patriotic. 
 
 ^ Liv. xlii. 45 Decimius unus sine uUo effectu, captarum etiam pecuniarum ab 
 regibus Illynorum suspicione infamis, Romam rediit. 
 
THE KNIGHTS 41 
 
 of our; work. The system of the Protectorate, which Rome had so 
 widely adopted, with its secret diplomatic dealings and its hidden 
 conferences with kings, offered greater facilities for secret enrich- 
 ment, and greater security for the enjoyment of the acquired wealth, 
 even than the plunder of a province. The proof of the committal 
 of the act was difficult, in most cases impossible. We must be con- 
 tent to chronicle the suspicion of its growing frequency, and the 
 suspicion is terrible enough. If the custom of wringing wealth from 
 subjects and selling support to potentates continued to prevail, the 
 stage might soon be reached at which it could be said, with that 
 element of exaggeration which lends emphasis to a truth, that a 
 small group of men were drawing revenues from every nation in the 
 world .^ 
 
 Such were the sources of wealth that lay open to men, to whom 
 commerce was officially barred and who were supposed to have no 
 direct interest in financial operations. Far ampler spheres of 
 pecuniary enrichment, more uniformly legal if sometimes as op- 
 pressive, were open to the class of men who by this time had been 
 recognised as forming a kind of second order in the State. The 
 citizens who had been proved by the returns at the census to l\ave 
 a certain amount of realisable capital at their disposal — a class of 
 citizens that ranged from the possessors of a moderate patrimony, 
 such as society might employ as a line of demarcation between an 
 upper and a lower middle class, to the controllers of the most 
 gigantic fortunes — had been welded into a body possessing consider- 
 able social and political solidarity. This soUdarity had been 
 attained chiefly through the community of interest derived from 
 the similar methods of pecuniary investment which they employed, 
 but also through the circumstance (slight in itself but significant in 
 an ancient society which ever tended to fall into grades) that all the 
 members of this class could describe themselves by the courtesy title 
 of "Knights" — a description justified by the right which they pos- 
 sessed of serving on their own horses with the Roman cavalry instead 
 of sharing the foot-service of the legionary. A common designation 
 was not inappropriate to men who were in a certain sense public 
 servants and formed in a very real sense a branch of the administra- 
 tion. The knight might have many avocations ; he might be 
 a money-lender, a banker, a large importer ; but he was pre- 
 
 ' Cic. in Verr. v. 48. 126 (70 B.C.) Patimur . . . multos jam annos et silemus cum 
 videamus ad paucos homines omnes omnium nationum pecunias pervenisse. 
 
42 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 eminently a farmer of the taxes. His position in the former cases 
 was simply that of an individual, who might or might not be 
 temporarily associated with others; his position in the latter case 
 meant that he was a member of a powerful and permanent corpora- 
 tion, one which served a government from which it might wring 
 great profits or at whose hands it might suifer heavy loss — a 
 government to be helped in its distress, to be fought when its 
 demands were overbearing, to be encouraged when its measures 
 seemed progressive, to be hindered when they seemed reaction- 
 ary from a commercial point of view. A group of individuals 
 or private firms could never have attained the consistency of 
 organisation, or maintained the uniformity of policy, which was 
 displayed by these societies of revenue-collectors ; even a company 
 must have a long life before it can attain strength and confidence 
 sufficient to act in a spirited manner in opposition to the State; 
 and it seems certain that these societies were wholly exempted from 
 the paralysing principle which the Roman law applied to partner- 
 ship — a principle which dictated that every partnership should be 
 dissolved by the death or retirement of one of the associates.^ The 
 State, which possessed no civil service of its own worthy of the 
 name, had taken pains to secure permanent organisations of private 
 share-holders which should satisfy its needs, to give them something 
 of an official character, and to secure to each one of them as a 
 result of its permanence an individual strength which, in spite of 
 the theory that the taxes and the public works were put up to 
 auction, may have secured to some of these companies a practical 
 monopoly of a definite sphere of operations. But a company, at 
 Rome as elsewhere, is powerful in proportion to the breadth of its 
 basis. A small ring of capitalists may tyrannise over society as 
 long as they confine themselves to securing a monopoly over private 
 enterprises, and as long as the law permits them to exercise this 
 autocratic power without control ; but such a ring is far less capable 
 of meeting the arbitrary dictation of an aristocratic body of land- 
 holders, such as the senate, or of encountering the resentful opposi- 
 tion of a nominally all-powerful body of consumers, such as the 
 Comitia, than a corporation which has struck its roots deeply in 
 society by the wide distribution of its shares. We know from the 
 positive assurance of a skilled observer of Roman life that the 
 
 ' For the principle see Gaius iii. 151-153. 
 
THE PUBLIC COMPANIES 43 
 
 number of citizens who had an interest in these companies was 
 particularly large.^ This observer emphasises the fact in order to 
 illustrate the dependence of a large section of society on the will 
 of the senate, which possessed the power of controlling the terms 
 of the agreements both for the public works which it placed in 
 the hands of contractors and for the sources of production which 
 it put out to lease ; ^ but it is equally obvious that the large size 
 of the number of shareholders must have exercised a profoundly 
 modifying influence on the arbitrary authority of a body such as the 
 senate which governed chiefly through deference to public opinion ; 
 and we know that, in the last resort, an appeal could be made to 
 the sovereign assembly, if a magistrate could be found bold enough 
 to carry to that quarter a proposal that had been discountenanced 
 by the senate.^ In such crises the strength of the companies depended 
 mainly on the number of individual interests that were at stake ; 
 the shareholder is more likely to appear at such gatherings than 
 the man who is not profoundly affected by the issue, and it is very 
 seldom that the average consumer has insight enough to see, or 
 energy enough to resist, the sufferings and inconveniences which 
 spring from the machinations of capital. It may have been possible 
 at times to pack a legislative assembly with men who had some 
 financial interest, however slight, in a dispute arising from a con- 
 tract caUing for decision ; and the time was soon to come when 
 such questions of detail would give place to far larger questions 
 of policy, when the issues springing from a line of foreign activity 
 which had been taken by the government might be debated in the 
 cold and glittering Ught of the golden stakes the loss or gain of 
 which depended upon the policy pursued. Nor could it have been 
 easy even for the experienced eye to see from the survey of such 
 a gathering that it represented the army of capital. Research has 
 
 ' Polybius (vi. 17), after speaking of various kinds of property belonging to the 
 state, adds itcJvto xc'P^fe"'*'" irvn^alvei. rk irpoeipriiifva Sii tov ttK^Bovs, koI crxeShv iis 
 (itos flireiv Trivras ivSei4<r6ai rais avals Kal rais epyaaiais rats 4k roiruv. 
 
 ^Polyb. vi. 17. The senate can irvinrT<l>iw,Tos ytvonivov Kovipicrat koI t)> irapA'Trav 
 oJwoTOu Tivhs a-v/ifidvTos oiroAucroi Trjs ipyavias. Thus the senate invalidated the 
 locationes of the censors of 184 B.C. (Liv. xxxix. 44 Locationes cum senatus 
 precibus et lacrimis publicanorum victus induci et de integro locari jussisset.) 
 
 ' In i6g B. c. it was the people that released from an oppressive regulation (Liv. 
 xliii. 16). In this case a tribune answered the censor's intimation, that none of the 
 former state-contractors should appear at the auction, by promulgating the resolution 
 Quae publica vectigalia, ultro tributa C. Claudius et Ti. Sempronius locassent, ea 
 rata locatio ne esaet. Ab integro locarentur, et ut omnibus redimendi et conducendi 
 promiscue jus esset. 
 
44 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 rendered it probable that the companies of the time were composed 
 of an outer as well as of an inner circle ; that the mass of share- 
 holders differed from those who were the promoters, managers and 
 active agents in the concern, that the liability of the former at least 
 was limited and that their shares, whether small or great, were 
 transmissible and subject to the fluctuations of the market.* But, 
 even if we do not believe that this distinction between socii and 
 participes was legally elaborated, yet there were probably means 
 by which members of the outside public could enter into business 
 relations with the recognised partners in one of these concerns to 
 share its profits and its losses.^ The freedman, who had invested 
 his small savings in the business of an enterprising patron, would 
 attach the same mercantile value to his own vote in the assembly as 
 would be given to his suffi-age in the senate by some noble peer, who 
 had bartered the independence of his judgment for the acquisition 
 of more rapid profits than could be drawn from land. 
 
 The farmers of the revenue fell into three broad classes.V First 
 there were the contractors for the creation, maintenance and repair 
 of the public works possessed or projected by the State, such as 
 roads, aqueducts, bridges, temples and other public buildings. 
 Gigantic profits were not possible in such an enterprise, if the 
 censors and their advisers acted with knowledge, impartiality and 
 discretion ; for the lowest possible tender was obtained for such 
 contracts and the results might be repudiated if inspection proved 
 them to be unsatisfactory. 'Secondly there were the companies 
 which leased sources of production that were owned by the State 
 such as fisheries, salt-works, mines and forest land. In some par- 
 ticular cases even arable land had been dealt with in this way, 
 
 ^ Deloume op. cit. pp. iig ff. Polybius (vi. 17) has been quoted as an authority 
 for the distinction between these two classes. He says 01 ixev yhip a-yopdiovffi jropit 
 Twy Tifi7]Twv avTol rits eKSdaets, ot 5e Kotvwvovo't to6toiSj ot S* iyyvuvrat robs 7iyopaK6TaSt 
 ol Si Tcts obffias SiS6airi irepL toiStoiv els rh Sn/idffioi/. The first three classes are the 
 mancipes, socii and praedes. In the fourth the shareholders (participes or perhaps 
 adfines, cf. Liv. xliii. 16) are found by Deloume (p. 120) ; but the identification is very 
 uncertain. The words may denote either real as opposed to formal security or the 
 final payment of the vectigal into the treasury. A better evidence for the distinction 
 between socii and shareholders is found in the Pseudo-Asconius (in Cic. in Verr. p. 197 
 Or.) Aliud enim socius, aliud particeps qui certam habet partem et non iwdivise agit ut 
 socius. The magnas partes (Cic. pro Rab. Post. 2. 4) and the particulam (Val. Max. 
 vi. g. 7) of a publicum, need only denote large or small shares held by the socii. 
 Dare partes (Cic. I.e.) is to "allot shares," but not necessarily to outside members. 
 Apart from the testimony of the Pseudo-Asconius and the mention of adfines in Livy 
 the evidence for the ordinary shareholder is slight but by no means fatal to his existence. 
 
 ''■ E.g. by loan to a socius at a rate of interest dependent on his returns, perhaps 
 with a. pactum de non petendo in certain contingencies. 
 
OPERATIONS IN STATE CONTRACTS 45 
 
 and the confiscated territories of Capua and Corinth were let on 
 long leases to publicani. Thirdly there were the societies, which 
 did not themselves acquire leases but acted as true intermediaries 
 between the State and individuals ^ who paid it revenue whether as 
 occupants of its territory, or as making use of sites which it claimed 
 to control, or as owing dues which had been prescribed by agree- 
 ment or by law. These classes of debtors to the State with whom 
 the middlemen came into contact may be illustrated respectively 
 by the occupants of the domain land of Italy, the ship-masters who 
 touched at ports, and the provincials such as those of Sicily or 
 Sardinia who were burdened with the payment of a tithe of the 
 produce of their lands.^. If we consider separately the characteristics 
 of the three classes of state-farmers, we find that the first and the 
 second are both direct employers of labour, the third reaping only 
 indirect profits from the production controlled by others. It was 
 in this respect, as employers of labour, that the societies of the 
 time were free from the anxieties and restrictions that beset the 
 modem employment of capital. Except in the rare case where 
 the contractors had leased arable land and sublet it to its original 
 occupants, — the treatment which seems to have been adopted for 
 the Campanian territory ^ — there can be no question that the work 
 which they controlled was done mainly by the hands of slaves. 
 They were therefore exempt from the annoyance and expense which 
 might be caused by the competition and the organised resistance 
 of free labour. The slaves employed in many of these industries 
 must have been highly skilled ; for many of these spheres of wealth 
 which the State had delegated to contractors required peculiar 
 industrial appliances and unusual knowledge in the foremen ana 
 leading artificers. The weakness of slave-labour, — its lack of intelH- 
 gence and spirit — could not have been so keenly felt as it was on 
 the great agricultural estates, which ofiered employment chiefly 
 for the unskilled ; and the difficulties that might arise from the lack 
 
 ^ These are, in strict legal language, the true publicani ; the lessees of state 
 property are publicanorum loco (Dig. 39. 4. 12 and 13). 
 
 2 Later legal theory-assimilated the third with the first class. Gams says (u. 7) 
 In eo (provinciali) solo dominium populi Romani est vel Caesaris, nos autem 
 possessionem tantum vel usumfructum habere videmur. But the theory is not 
 ancient— perhaps not older than the Gracchan period. See Greenidge Roman Pubhc 
 Life p. 320. From a broad standpoint the first and second classes may be assimi- 
 lated, since the payment of harbour dues (portoria) is based on the idea of the use 
 of public ground by a private occupant. 
 
 'Cic. de Leg. Agr. ii. 31. 84. 
 
46 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 of strength or interest, from the possession of hands that were 
 either feeble or inert, were probably overcome in the same uncom- 
 promising manner in the workshop of the contractor and on the 
 domains of the landed gentry. The maxim that an aged slave 
 should be sold could not have been peculiar to tlie dabbler in 
 agriculture, and the ergastulum with its chained gangs must have 
 been as familiar to the manufacturer as to the landed proprietor.^ 
 As to the promoters and the shareholders of these companies, it 
 could not be expected that they should trace in imagination, or 
 tremble as they traced, the heartless, perhaps inhuman, means by 
 which the regular returns on their capital were secured.* Nor is 
 it probable that the government of this period took any great care 
 to supervise the conditions of the work or the lot of the workman. 
 The partner desired quick and great returns, the State large rents 
 and small tenders. The remorseless drain on human energy, the 
 waste of human life, and the practical abeyance of free labour which 
 was flooding the towns with idlers, were ideas which, if they ever 
 arose, were probably kept in the background by a government 
 which was generally in financial difficulties, and by individuals 
 animated by all the fierce commercial competition of the age. 
 
 The desire of contractors and lessees for larger profits naturally 
 took the form of an eagerness to extend their sphere of operations. 
 Every advance in the Roman sphere of military occupation implied 
 the making of new roads, bridges and aqueducts ; every extension 
 of this sphere was likely to be followed by the confiscation of certain 
 territories, which the State would declare to be public domains and 
 hand over to the company that would guarantee the payment of 
 the largest revenue. But the sordid imperialism which animated 
 the contractor and lessee must have been as nothing to that which 
 fed the dreams of the true state-middleman, the individual who 
 intervened between the taxpayer and the State, the producer and the 
 consumer. Conquest would mean fresh lines of coast and frontier, 
 on which would be set the toll-houses of the collectors with their 
 local directors and their active " families " of freedmen and slaves. 
 It might even mean that a more prolific source of revenue would be 
 handed over to the care of the publican. The spectacle of the 
 method in which the land-tax was assessed and collected in Sicily 
 
 1 Thedenat in Daremberg-Saglio Diet, des Antiq. s.t. Ergastulum. 
 ''Compare Cunningham Western Civilisation in its Economic Aspects vol. i. 
 p. 162. 
 
COMMERCE AND IMPERIALISM 47 
 
 and Sardinia may have already inspired the hope that the next 
 instance of provincial organisation might see greater justice done 
 to the capitalists of Rome. When Sicily had been brought under 
 Roman sway, the aloofness of the government from financial in- 
 terests, as well as its innate conservatism, justified by the success of 
 Italian organisation, which dictated the view that local institutions 
 should not be lightly changed, had led it to accept the methods for 
 the taxation of land which it found prevalent in the island at the 
 time of its annexation. The methods implied assessment by local 
 officials and collection by local companies or states.' It is true 
 that neither consequence entirely excluded the enterprise of the 
 Roman capitalists ; they had crossed the Straits of Messina on many 
 a private enterprise and had settled in such large numbers in the 
 business centres of the island that the charter given to the Sicilian 
 cities after the first servile war made detailed provision for the 
 settlement of suits between Romans and natives.^ It was not to be 
 expected that they should refrain from joining in, or competing 
 with, the local companies who bid for the Sicilian tithes, nor was 
 such association or competition forbidden by the law. But the 
 scattered groups of capitalists who came into contact with the 
 Sicilian yeomen did not possess the official character and the official 
 influence of the great companies of Italy. No association, how- 
 ever powerful, could boast a monopoly of the main source of revenue 
 in the island. But what they had done was an index of what they 
 might do, if another opportunity and a more complaisant govern- 
 ment could be found. Any individual or any party which could 
 promise the knights the unquestioned control of the revenues of a 
 new province would be sure of their heartiest sympathy and sup- 
 port. 
 
 And it would be worth the while of any individual or party 
 which ventured to frame a programme traversing the lines of poli- 
 tical orthodoxy, to bid for the co-operation of this class. For recent 
 history had shown that the thorough organisation of capital, en- 
 couraged by the State to rid itself of a tiresome burden in times of 
 peace and to secure itself a support in times of need, might become, 
 as it pleased, a bulwark or a menace to the government which had 
 created it. The useful monster had begun to develop a self-con- 
 sciousness of his own. He had his amiable, even his patriotic 
 
 1 Cic. in Verr. ii. 55. 137 ; iii. 33. 77 ; ii. 13. 32 ; 26. 63. 
 
 2 Ibid. ii. 13. 32. 
 
48 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 moments ; but his activity might be accompanied by the grim de- 
 mand for a price which his nominal master was not prepared to pay. 
 The darkest and the brightest aspects of the commercial spirit had 
 been in turn exhibited during the Second Punic War.-^On the one 
 hand we find an organised band of publicans attempting to break 
 up an assembly before which a fraudulent contractor and wrecker 
 was to be tried ; ' on the other, we find them meeting the shock of 
 Cannae with the offer of a large loan to the beggared treasury, lent 
 without guarantee and on the bare word of a ruined government 
 that it should be met when there was money to meet it.^ Other 
 companies came forward to put their hands to the public works, 
 even the most necessary of which had been suspended by the misery 
 of the war, and told the bankrupt State that they would ask for 
 their payment when the struggle had completely closed.' A noble 
 spectacle ! and if the positions of employer and employed had been 
 reversed only in such crises and in such a way, no harm could come 
 of the memory either of the obligation or the service. But the 
 strength shown by this beneficence sometimes exhibited itself in un- 
 pleasant forms and led to unpleasant consequences. The censorships 
 of Cato and of Gracchus had been fierce struggles of conservative 
 officialdom against the growing influence and (as these magistrates 
 held) the swelling insolence of the public companies ; and in both 
 cases the associations had sought and i found assistance, either from 
 a sympathetic party within the senate, or from the people. Cato's 
 regulations had been reversed and their vigorous author had been 
 threatened with a tribunician prosecution before the Comitia;* 
 while Gracchus and his colleague had actually been impeached be- 
 fore a popular court.* The reckless employment of servile labour 
 by the companies that farmed the property of the State had already 
 proved a danger to public security. The society which had pur- 
 chased from the censors the right of gathering pitch from the 
 Bruttian forest of Sila had filled the neighbourhood with bands 
 of fierce and uncontrolled dependants, chiefly slaves, but partly 
 men of free birth who may have been drawn from the desperate 
 Bruttians whom Rome had driven from their homes. The con- 
 sequences were deeds of violence and murder, which called for 
 the intervention of the senate, and the consuls had been appointed 
 
 1 Liv. XXV. 3. 2 Liv. xxiii. 49. 
 
 ' Liv. xxiv. 18 ; Val. Max. v. 6. 8. 
 
 * Plut. Cato Maj. ig. B Ljy xliii. 16. 
 
THE FINANCIER 49 
 
 as a special commission to inquire into the outrages.^ NOr were 
 complaints limited to Italy ; provincial abuses had already called 
 for drastic remedies. A pfoof that this was the case is to be found 
 in the striking fact that on the renewed settlement of Macedonia in 
 167 it was actually decreed that the working of the mines in that 
 country, at least on the extended scale which would have required 
 a system of contract, should be given up. It was considered 
 dangerous to entrust it to native companies, and as to the Roman 
 — their mere presence in the country would mean the surrender of 
 all guarantees of the rule of public law or of the enjoyment of 
 liberty by the provincials.^ The State still preferred the embarrass- 
 ments of poverty to those of overbearing wealth ; its choice proved 
 its weakness; but even the element of strength displayed in the 
 surrender might soon be missed, if capital obtained a wider influ- 
 ence and a more definite political recognition. As things were, 
 these organisations of capital were but just becoming conscious of 
 their strength and had by no means reached even the prime of 
 their vigour. The opening up of the riches of the East were re- 
 quired to develop the gigantic manhood which should dwarf the 
 petty figure of the agricultural wealth of Italy. 
 
 Had the state-contractors stood alone, or had not they engaged 
 in varied enterprises for which their official character offered a 
 favourable point of vantage, the numbers and influence of the 
 individuals who had embarked their capital in commercial enter- 
 prise would have been far smaller than they actually were. But, 
 in addition to the publican, we must take account of the business 
 man (negotiator) who lent money on interest or exercised the 
 profession of a banker. Such men had pecuniary interests which 
 Icnew no geographical limits, and in all broad questions of policy 
 were hkely to side with the state-contractor.^ The money-lender 
 
 ' Cic. Brut. 22. 85 Cum in silva Sila facta caedes esset notique homines inter- 
 fecti insimulareturque familia, partim etiam liberi, societatis ejus, quae picarias de 
 P. Cornelio, L. Mummio censoribus redemisset, decrevisse senatum ut de ea re 
 cognoscerent et statuerent consules. For the value of the pine-woods of Sila see 
 Strabo vi. i. 9. , , . 
 
 2 Liv. xlv. 18 Metalli quoque Macedonici, quod ingens vectigal erat, locationesque 
 praediorum rusticorum toUi placebat. Nam neque sine publicano exerceri posse, 
 et, ubi publicanus esset, ibi aut jus publicum vanum aut libertatem sociis nullam esse. 
 The praedia rusHca were probably public domains, that might have formed part of 
 the crovifn lands of the Macedonian Kings and would now, in the natural course of 
 events, have been leased to publicani. 
 
 3 It might happen that the interest of the negotiator was opposed to that of the 
 publicanus. The former, for instance, might wish portoria to be lessened, the latter 
 to be increased (Cic. ad Att. ii. 16. 4). But such a conflict was unusual. 
 
 4 
 
50 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 (fenerator) represented one of the earliest, most familiar and most 
 courted forms of Roman enterprise — one whose intrinsic attractions 
 for the grasping Roman mind had resisted every effort of the legisr 
 lature by engaging in its support the wealthiest landowner as well 
 as the smallest usurer. It is true that a taint clung to the trade — 
 a taint which was not merely a product of the mistaken economic 
 conception of the nature of the profits made by the lender, but was 
 the more immediate outcome of social misery and the fulminations 
 of the legislature. Cato points to the fact that the Roman law 
 had stamped the usurer as a greater curse to society than the 
 common thief, and makes the dishonesty of loans on interest a 
 sufficient ground for declining a form of investment that was at 
 once safe and profitable.^ Usury, he had also maintained, was a 
 form of homicide.^ But to the majority of minds this feeling of 
 dishonour had always been purely external and superficial. The 
 proceedings were not repugnant to the finer sense if they were not 
 made the object of a life-long profession and not blatantly exhibited 
 to the eyes of the public. A taint clung to the money-lender who 
 sat in an office in the Forum, and handed his loans or received his 
 interest over the counter ; ^ it was not felt by the capitalist who 
 stood behind this small dealer, by the nobleman whose agent lent 
 seed-corn to the neighbouring yeomen, by the inrestor in the state- 
 contracts who perhaps hardly realised that his profits represented 
 but an indirect form of usury. But, whatever restrictions public 
 opinion may have imposed on the money-lender as a dealer in 
 Rome and with Romans, such restrictions were not likely to be felt 
 by the man who had the capital and the enterprise to carry Ms 
 financial operations beyond the sea. Not only was he dealing with 
 provincials or foreigners, but he was dealing on a scale so grand 
 that the magnitude of the business almost concealed its shame. 
 Cities and kings were now to be the recipients of loans and, if the 
 lender occupied a political position that seemed inconsistent with 
 the profession of a usurer, his personality might be successfully 
 
 ^ Cato R. R, pr. i Est interdum praestare mercaturis rem quaerere, nisi tam 
 periculosum sit, et item fenerari, si tam lionestum sit. Majores nostri sic habuerunt 
 et ita in legibus posiverunt, farem dupli condemnari, feneratorem quadrupli. Quanto 
 pejorem civem existimarint feneratorem quam furem, hinc licet existimare. C/. Cic. 
 de Off. i. 42. 150 Improbantur ii quaestus, qui in odia hominum incurrunt, ut porti- 
 torum, ut feneratorum. 
 
 'J Cic. de Off. ii. 25. 89 Cum ille . . . dixisset "Quid fenerari?" turn Cato 
 "Quid hominem," inquit, " occidere ? " 
 
 ' For such professional money-lenders see Plaut. Most. iii. i.iS.; Cure. iv. 1. 19. 
 
BANKING 51 
 
 concealed under the name of some local agent, who was adequately 
 rewarded for the obloquy which he incurred in the eyes of the 
 native populations, and the embarrassing conflicts with the Roman 
 government which were sometimes entailed by an excess of zeal. 
 Cato had swept both principals and agents out of his province of 
 Sardinia ; ^ but he was a man who courted hostility, and he lived 
 before the age when the enmity of capital would prove the certain 
 ruin of the governor and a source of probable danger to the senate. 
 In the operations of the money-lender we find the most universal 
 link between the Forum and the provinces. There was no country 
 so poor that it might not be successfully exploited, and indeed 
 exploitation was often conditioned by simplicity of character, lack 
 of familiarity with the developed systems of finance, and the lack 
 of thrift which amongst peoples of low culture is the source of their 
 constant need. The employment of capital for this purpose was 
 always far in advance of the limits of Roman dominion. A pro- 
 tectorate might be in the grasp of a group of private individuals 
 long before it was absorbed into the empire, the extension of the 
 frontiers was conditioned by considerations of pecuniary, not of 
 political safety, and the government might at any moment be 
 forced into a war to protect the interests of capitahsts whom, in its 
 collective capacity as a government, it regarded as the greatest foes 
 of its dominion. 
 
 A more beneficent employment of capital was illustrated by the 
 profession of banking which, like most of the arts which exhibit the 
 highest refinement of the practical intellect, had been given to the 
 Romans by the Greeks.^ It had penetrated from Magna Graecia 
 to Latium and from Latium to Rome, and had been fully estab- 
 lished in the city by the time of the Second Punic War.^ The 
 strangers, who had introduced an art which so greatly facilitated 
 the conduct of business transactions, had been welcomed by the 
 government, and were encouraged to ply their calling in the shops 
 rented from the State on the north and south sides of the Forum. 
 These argentarii satisfied the two needs of the exchange of foreign 
 money, and of advances in cash on easier terms than could be gained 
 
 ' Liv. xxxii. 27. 
 
 ^ On the history and functions of the bankers see Voigt Ueber die Bankiers, die 
 Buchfuhrung und die Litteralobligation der Romer (Abh. d. Konigl. Sachs. Gesell. d. 
 Wissench. ; Phil. hist. Classe, Bd. x) ; Marquardt Staatsverw. ii. pp. 64 ff. ; Deloume 
 Les manieurs d'argent d Rome, pp. 146 ff. 
 
 3 Plin. H. N. xxi. 3. 8. 
 
52 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 from the professional or secret usurer, to citizens of every grade ^ 
 who did not wish, or found it difficult, to turn theu- real property 
 into gold. Similar functions were at a somewhat later period 
 usurped by the money-testers (nummularii), who perhaps entered 
 Rome shortly after the issue of the first native silver coinage, and 
 competed with the earlier-established bankers in most of the 
 branches of their trade.^ Ultimately there was no department of 
 business connected with the transference and circulation of money 
 which the joint profession did not embrace. Its representatives were 
 concerned with the purchase and sale of coin, and the equalisation 
 of home with foreign rates of exchange ; they lent on credit, gave 
 security for others' loans, and received money on deposit ; they 
 acted as intermediaries between creditors and debtors in the most 
 distant places and gave their travelling customers circular notes 
 on associated houses in foreign lands ; they were equally ready to 
 dissipate by auction an estate that had become the property of a 
 congress of creditors or a number of legatees. Their carefully kept 
 books improved even the methodical habits of the Romans in the 
 matter of business entries, and introduced the form of " contract by 
 ledger" {litterarum obligatio), which greatly facilitated business 
 operations on an extended scale by substituting the written record of 
 obligation for other bonds more difficult to conclude and more easy 
 to evade. 
 
 The business life of Rome was in every way worthy of her posi- 
 tion as an imperial city, and her business centre was becoming the 
 greatest exchange of the commercial world of the day. The forum 
 still drew its largest crowds to listen to the voice of the lawyer or 
 the orator ; but these attractions were occasional and the constant 
 throng that any day might witness was drawn thither by the entice- 
 ments supplied by the spirit of adventure, the thirst for news and 
 the strain of business life. The comic poet has drawn for us a 
 picture of the shifting crowd and its chief elements, good and bad, 
 honest and dishonest. He has shown us the man who mingles 
 pleasure with his business, lingering under the Basilica in extremely 
 doubtful company ; there too is a certain class of business men 
 
 ^ C/. Cic. de Off. iii. 14. 58 Pythius, qui esset ut argentarius apud omnes 
 ordines gratiosus. . . . 
 
 ^ Yet the two never became thoroughly assimilated. The argentarius, for in- 
 stance, was not an official tester of money, and the nummularii appear not to have 
 performed certain functions usual to the banker, e.g. sales by auction. See Voigt 
 of. cit. pp. 521. 522. 
 
BUSINESS LIFE AT ROME 53 
 
 giving or accepting verbal bonds. In the lower part of the Forum 
 stroll the lords of the exchange, rich and of high repute ; under the 
 old shops on the north sit the bankers, giving and receiving loans 
 on interest.^ The Forum has become in common language the 
 symbol of all the ups and downs of business life,^ and the moralist 
 of later times could refer all students, who wish to master the lore 
 of the quest and investment of money, to the excellent men who 
 have their station by the temple of Janus.^ The aspect of the 
 market place had altered greatly to meet the growing needs. 
 Great BasUicae — sheltered promenades which probably derived their 
 names from the Royal Courts of the Hellenic East — had lately 
 been erected. Two of the earliest, the Porcian and Sempronian, 
 had been raised on the site of business premises which had been 
 bought up for the purpose,* and were meant to serve the purposes 
 of a mai'ket and an exchange.^ Their sheltering roofs were soon 
 employed to accommodate the courts of justice, but it was the 
 business not the legal life of Rome that called these grand edifices 
 into existence. 
 
 The financial activity which centred in the Forum was a con- 
 sequence, not merely of the contract-system encouraged by the 
 State and of the business of the banker and the money-lender, but 
 of the great foreign trade which supplied the wants and luxuries 
 of Italy and Rome. This was an import trade concerned partly with 
 the supply of corn for a nation that could no longer feed itself, 
 partly with the supply of luxuries from the East and of more 
 necessary products, including instruments of production, from the 
 West. Tte Eastern trade touched the Euxine Sea at Dioscurias, 
 
 1 Plaut. Cure. iv. i. 6 ff. 
 
 Commonstrabo, quo in quemque hominem facile inveniatis loco. 
 
 Ditis damnosos maritos sub basilica quaerito. 
 Ibidem erunt scorta exoleta, quique stipulari solent. 
 
 In foro infumo boni homines, atque dites ambulant. 
 
 Sub veteribus, ibi sunt qui dant quique accipiunt faenore. 
 
 ' To be bankrupt is foro mergi (Plaut. Ep. i. 2. i6), « foro fugere, abire (Plaut. 
 Pen. iii. 3. 31 and 38). 
 
 'Cic. de Off. ii. 24. 87 Toto hoc de genere, de quaerenda, de collocanda 
 pecunia, vellem etiam de utenda, commodius a quibusdam optumis viris ad Janum 
 medium sedentibus . . . disputatur. For Janus medius and the question whether 
 it means an arch or a street see Richter Topogr. dtr Stadt Rom. pp. 106. 107. 
 
 * Liv. xxxix. 44 ; xliv. 16. The Porcian was followed by the Fulvian Basilica 
 (Liv. xl. 51). The dates of the three were 184, 179, i6g B.C. respectively. 
 
 ^ Delpume op. cit. pp. 320 ff. ; Guadet in Daremberg-Saglio Diet, dts Antiq. s.v. 
 Basilicae. 
 
64 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 Asia Minor chiefly at Ephesus and Apamea, and Egypt at Alexan- 
 dria. It brought Pontic fish, Hellenic wines, the spices and 
 medicaments of Asia and of the Eastern coast of Africa, and count- 
 less other articles, chiefly of the type which creates the need to 
 which it ministers. More robust products were supplied by the 
 West through the trade-routes which came down to Gades, Genua 
 and Aquileia. Hither were brought slaves, cattle, horses and dogs ; 
 linen, canvas and wool; timber for ships and houses, and raw 
 metal for the manufacture of implements and works of art. Neither 
 in East nor West was the product brought by the producer to 
 the consumer. In accordance with the more recent tendencies of 
 Hellenistic trade, great emporia had grown up in which the goods 
 were stored, until they were exported by the local dealers or sought 
 by the wholesale merchant from an Italian port. As the Tyrrhenian 
 Sea became the radius of the trade of the world, Puteoli became 
 the greatest staple, to which this commerce centred ; thence the 
 goods which were destined for Rome were*conveyed to Ostia by 
 water or by land, and taken by ships which drew no depth of water 
 up the Tiber to the city.^ But it must not be supposed that this 
 trade was first controlled by Romans and Italians when it touched 
 the shores of Italy. Groups of citizens and allies were to be found 
 in the great staples of the world, receiving the products as they 
 were brought down from the interior and supplying the shipping 
 by which they were transferred to Rome.^ They were not manu- 
 facturers, but intermediaries who reaped a larger profit from the 
 carrying trade than could be gained by any form of production 
 in their native land. The Roman and Italian trader was to be 
 inferior only to the money-lender as a stimulus and a stumbling- 
 block to the imperial government ; he was, like the latter, to be 
 a cause of annexation and a fire-brand of war, and serves as an 
 almost equal illustration of the truth that a government which 
 does not control the operations of capital is likely to become their 
 instrument.' 
 
 ' Large transport ships could themselves come to Rome if their build was suited 
 to river navigation. In 167 B.C. Aemilius Paulus astonished the city with the size of 
 a ship (once belonging to the Macedonian King) on which he arrived (Liv. xlv. 35). 
 On the whole question of this foreign trade see Voigt in Iwan-MuUer's Handbuch 
 iv. 2, pp. 373-378. 
 
 2 Voigt op. cit. p. 377 n. gg. 
 
 ' Compare Cunningham Western Civilisation in its Economic Aspects vol. i. p. 
 165, " It is only under very special conditions, including the existence of a strong 
 government to exercise a constant control, that free play for the formation of 
 
THE SMALL TRADER 55 
 
 If we descend from the aristocracy of trade to its poorer re- 
 presentatives, we find that time had wrought great changes in the 
 lot of the smaller manufacturer and artisan. It is true that the 
 old trade-gilds of Rome, which tradition carried back to the days 
 of Numa, still maintained their existence. The goldsmiths, copper- 
 smiths, builders, dyers, leather-workers, tanners and potters i still 
 held their regular meetings and celebrated their regular games. 
 But it is questionable whether even at this period their collegiate 
 life was not rather concerned with ceremonial than with business, 
 whether they did not gather more frequently to discuss the prospects 
 of their social and religious functions than to consider the rules and 
 methods of their trades. We shall soon see these gilds of artificers 
 a great political power in the State — one that often alarmed the 
 government and sometimes paralysed its control of the streets of 
 Rome. But their political activity was connected with ceremonial 
 rather than with trade ; it was as religious associations that bhey 
 supported the demagogue of the moment and disturbed the peace 
 of the city. They made war against any aristocratic abuse that 
 was dangled for the moment before their eyes ; but they undertook 
 no consistent campaign against the dominance of capital. / Their 
 activity was th at of the radical caucus, not of the trade-union.' But, 
 if even their industrial character had been fully maintained and 
 trade interests had occupied more of their attention than street 
 processions and political agitation, they could never have posed as 
 the representatives of the interests of the free-born sons of Rome. 
 The class of freedmen was freely admitted to their ranks, and the 
 freedman was from an economic point of view the greatest enemy 
 of the pure-blooded Italian. We shall also see that the freedman 
 was usually not an independent agent in the conduct of the trade 
 which he professed. He owed duties to his patron which limited 
 his industrial activity and rendered a whole-hearted co-operation 
 with his brother-workers impossible. 
 
 It is questionable whether any gild organisation could have 
 stood the shock of the immense development of industrial activity 
 
 associations of capitalists bent on securing profit, is anything but a public danger. 
 The landed interest in England has hitherto been strong enough to bring legislative 
 control to bear on the moneyed men from time to time. . . . The problem of 
 leaving sufficient liberty for the formation of capital and for enterprise in the use of 
 it, without allowing it licence to exhaust the national resources, has not been solved." 
 
 ^ Plut. Numa 17. On the history of these gilds see Waltzing Corporations pro- 
 fessionelles chez Us Romains pp. 61-78. 
 
56 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 of which the more fortunate classes at Rome were now reaping the 
 fruits. The trades represented by Numa's colleges would at best 
 have formed a mere framework for a maze of instruments which 
 formed the complex mechanism needed to satisfy the voracious 
 wants of the new society. The gold-smithery of early times was 
 now complicated by the arts of chasing and engraving on precious 
 stones ; the primitive builder, if he were still to ply his trade with 
 profit, must associate it with the skill of the men who made 
 the stuccoed ceilings, the mosaic pavements, the painted walls. 
 The leather-worker must have learnt to make many a kind of 
 fashionable shoe, and the dyer to work in violet, scarlet or saflron, 
 in any shade or colour to which fashion had given a temporary 
 vogue. Tailoring had become a fine art, and the movable decora- 
 tions of houses demanded a host of skilled workmen, each of whom 
 was devoted to the speciality which he professed. It would seem 
 as though the very weaknesses of society might have benefited the 
 lower middle class, and the siftings of the harvest given by the 
 spoils of empire might have more than supplied the needs of a 
 parasitic proletariate. It is an unquestioned fact that the growing 
 luxury of the times did benefit trade with that doubtful benefit 
 which accompanies the diversion of capital from purposes of per- 
 manent utility to objects of aesthetic admiration or temporary 
 display; but it is an equally unquestioned fact that this un- 
 healthy nutriment did not strengthen to any appreciable extent 
 such of the lower classes as could boast pure Roman blood. The 
 military conscription, to which the more prosperous of these classes 
 were exposed, was inimical to the constant pursuit of that technical 
 skill which alone could enable its possessor to hold the market 
 against freer competitors. Such of the freedmen and the slaves as 
 were trained to these pursuits — men who would not have been so 
 trained had they not possessed higher artistic perception and greater 
 deftness in execution than their fellows — were wholly freed from 
 the military burden which absorbed much of the leisure, and 
 blunted much of the skill, possessed by their free-born rivals. 
 The competition of slaves must have been still more cruel in the 
 country districts and near the smaller country towns than in 
 the capital itself. At Rome the limitations of space must have 
 hindered the development of home-industries in the houses of the 
 nobles, and, although it is probable that much that was manu- 
 factured by the slaves of the country estate was regularly supplied 
 
COMPETITION OF FREEDMEN 57 
 
 to the urban villa, yet for the purchase of articles of immediate 
 use or of goods which showed the highest qualities of workmanship 
 the aristocratic proprietor must have been dependent on the com- 
 petition of the Roman market. But the rustic villa might be 
 perfectly self-supporting, and the village artificer must have looked 
 in vain for orders from the spacious mansion, which, once a dwelling- 
 house or faxm, had become a factory as well. Both in town and 
 country the practice of manumission was paralysing the energies 
 of the free-born man who attempted to follow a profitable pro- 
 fession. The frequency of the gift of liberty to slaves is one of the 
 brightest aspects of the system of servitude as practised by the 
 Romans ; but its very beneficence is an illustration of the aristocrat's 
 contempt for the proletariate ; for, where the ideal of citizenship 
 is high, manumission — at least of such a kind as shall give political 
 rights, or any trading privileges, equivalent to those of the free 
 citizen — is infrequent. In the Rome of this period, however, the 
 liberation of a slave showed something more than a mere negative 
 neglect of the interests of the citizen. The gift of freedom was 
 often granted by the master in an interested, if not in a wholly 
 selfish, spirit. He was freed from the duty of supporting his slave 
 while he retained his services as a freed man. The performance 
 of these services was, it is true, not a legal condition of manu- 
 mission ; but it was the result of the agreement between master 
 and slave on which the latter had attained his freedom. The 
 nobleman who had granted liberty to his son's tutor, his own 
 doctor or his barber, might still bargain to be healed, shaved or 
 have his children instructed free of expense. The bargain was just 
 in so far as the master was losing services for which he had origin- 
 ally paid, and juster still when the freedman set up business on the 
 peculium which his master had allowed him to acquire during 
 the days of his servitude. But the contracting parties were on an 
 unequal footing, and the burden enforced by the manumittor was 
 at times so intolerable that towards the close of the second century 
 the praetor was forced to intervene and set limits to the personal 
 service which might be expected from the gratitude of the liberated 
 slave.i The performance of such gratuitous services necessarily 
 
 1 The praetor was Rutilius (Ulpian in Dig. 38. 2. i. i), perhaps P. Rutilius Rufus, 
 the consul of 105 B.C. (Mommsen Staatsr. iii. p. 433). See the last chapter of this 
 volume. For the principle on which such operae were exacted from freedmen see 
 Mommsen I.e. 
 
58 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 diminished the demand for the labour of the free man who at- 
 tempted to practise the pursuit of an art which required skill and 
 was dependent for its returns on the custom of the wealthier classes; 
 and even such needs as could not be met by the gratuitous services 
 of freedmen or the purchased labour of slaves, were often supplied, 
 not by the labour of the free-born Roman, but by that of the 
 immigrant peregrinus. The foreigner naturally reproduced the 
 arts of his own country in a form more perfect than could be ac- 
 quired by the Roman or Italian, and as Rome had acquired foreign 
 wants it was inevitable that they should be mainly supplied by 
 foreign hands. We cannot say that most of the new developments 
 in trade and manufacture had slipped from the hands of the free 
 citizens ; it would be truer to maintain that they had never been 
 grasped by them at all. And, worse than this, we must admit 
 that there was little effort to attain them. Both the cause and 
 the consequence of the monopoly of trade and manufacture of a 
 petty kind by freedmen and foreigners is to be found in the con- 
 tempt felt by the free-bom Roman for the "sordid and illiberal 
 sources of livelihood "} This prejudice was reflected in public law, 
 for any one who exercised a trade or profession was debarred from 
 office at Rome.^ As the magistracy had become the monopoly of 
 a class, the prejudice might have been little more than one of the 
 working principles of an aristocratic government, had not the arts 
 which supplied the amenities of life actually tended to drift into 
 the hands of the non-citizen or the man of defective citizenship. 
 The most abject Roman could in his misery console himself with 
 the thought that the hands, which should only touch the plough 
 and the sword, had never been stained by trade. His ideal was 
 that of the nobleman in his palace. It differed in degree but not 
 in kind. It centred round the Forum, the battlefield and the 
 farm. 
 
 For even the most lofty aristocrat would have exempted agri- 
 culture from the ban of labour ; ^ and, if the man of free birth 
 could still have toiled productively on his holding, his contempt 
 for the rabble which supplied the wants of his richer fellow-citizens 
 in the towns would have been justified on material, if not on moral, 
 
 • Inliberales ac sordid! quaestus (Cic. de Off. i. 42. 150). 
 " Gell. yii. (vi.) g ; Liv. ix. 46 ; Mommsen Staatsr. i. p. 497. 
 ' C/. Cic. de off. i. 42. 151 Omnium autem rerum, ex quibus aliquid adquiritur, 
 nihil est agricultura melius, nihil uberius, nihil dulcius, nihil homine libero dignius. , 
 
CONDITION OF AGRICULTURE 59 
 
 grounds. He would have held the real sources of wealth which 
 had made the empire possible and still maintained the actual rulers 
 of that empire. (^Italian agriculture was still the basis of the 
 brilliant life of RomeV Had it not been so, the epoch of revolu- 
 tion could not have been ushered in by an agrarian law. Had the 
 interest in the land been small, no fierce attack would have been 
 made and no encroachment stoutly resisted. We are at the com- 
 mencement of the epoch of the dominance of trade, but we have 
 not quitted the epoch of the supremacy of the landed interest. 
 
 ^^he vital question connected with agriculture was not that of 
 its failure or success, but that of the individuals who did the work 
 and shared the profits. The labourer, the soil, the market stand 
 in such close relations to one another that it is possible for older 
 types of cultivation and tenure to be a failure while newer types 
 are a brilliant success. But an economic success may be a social 
 failure. Thus it was with the greater part of the Italian soil of 
 the day which had passed into Roman hands. Efficiency was 
 secured by accumulation and the smaller holdings were falling 
 into decay. 
 
 A problem so complex as that of a change in tenure and in the 
 type of productive activity employed on the soil is not likely to yield 
 to the analysis of any modern historian who deals with the events of 
 the ancient world. He is often uncertain whether he is describing 
 causes or symptoms, whether the primary evil was purely economic 
 or mainly social, whether diminished activity was the result of 
 poverty and decreasing numbers, or whether pauperism and diminu- 
 tion of population were the effects of a weakened nerve for labour 
 and of a standard of comfort so feverishly high that it declined the 
 hard life of the fields and induced its possessors to refuse to propa- 
 gate their kind. But social and economic evils react so constantly 
 on one another that the question of the priority of the one to the 
 other is not always of primary importance. A picture has been 
 conjured up by the slight sketches of ancient historians and the 
 more prolonged laments of ancient writers on agriculture, which 
 gives us broad outlines that we must accept as true, although 
 we may refuse to join in the belief that these outlines repre- 
 sent an unmixed and almost incurable evil. These writers even 
 attempt to assign causes, which convince by their probability, 
 although there is often a suspicion that the ultimate and elusive 
 truth has not been grasped. 
 
60 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 The two great symptoms which immediately impress our im- 
 agination are a decline, real or apparent, in the numbers of the 
 free population of Rome, and the introduction of new methods of 
 agriculture which entailed a diminution in the class of freehold 
 proprietors who had held estates of small or moderate size. The 
 evidence for an actual decline of the population must be gathered 
 exclusively from the Roman census hsts.^ At first sight these seem 
 to tell a startling tale. At the date of the outbreak of the First 
 Punic War (265 B.C.) the roll of Roman citizens had been given as 
 382,234,2 at a census held but three years before the tribunate 
 of Tiberius Gracchus (136 B.C.) the numbers presented by the list 
 were 307,833.^ In 129 years the burgess roll had shrunk by nearly 
 75,000 heads of the population. The shrinkage had not always 
 been steadily progressive ; sometimes there is a sudden drop which 
 tells of the terrible ravages of war. But the return of peace 
 brought no upward movement that was long maintained. In the 
 interval of comparative rest which followed the Third Macedonian 
 War the census rolls showed a decrease of about 13,000 in ten 
 years.* Seven years later 2,000 more have disappeared,* and a 
 slight increase at the next lustrum is followed by another drop 
 of about 14,000.® The needs of Rome had increased, and the 
 means for meeting them were dwindling year by year. This must 
 be admitted, however we interpret the meaning of these returns. 
 A hasty generalisation might lead us to infer that a wholesale 
 diminution was taking place in the population of Rome and Italy. 
 The returns may add weight to other evidence which points this 
 way ; but, taken by themselves, they afford no warrant for such a 
 conclusion. The census lists were concerned, not only purely with 
 Roman citizens, but purely with Roman citizens of a certain type. 
 It is practically certain that they reproduce only the effective 
 fighting strength of Rome,'^ and take no account of those citizens 
 whose property did not entitle them to be placed amongst the 
 
 1 See de Boor Fasti Censorii. A disturbing element in this enumeration is the 
 uncertainty of numerals in ancient manuscripts. But the fact of the progressive 
 decline is beyond all question. No accidental errors of transcription could have 
 produced this result in the text of Liyy's epitome. 
 
 « Liv. Ep. xvi. 
 
 ' Ibid. Ivi. * Ibid. xlvi. xlviii. 
 
 ^ Euseb. Arm. a. Abr. 1870 01. 158.3 (Hieron. 01. 158.2 = 608 A.u.c). 
 
 «Liv. fi^. Ivi. 
 
 ' Eorum qui arma ferre possent (Liv. i. 44) ; tUv ix^"'''"'" t^'' (rrpoTeiiiri/tov fiKixlay 
 (Dionys. xi. 63) ; tuv 4v tois vKixlais (Polyb. ii. 23). 
 
DECLINE OF THE WEALTHIER CLASSES 61 
 
 ^ But, if it is not necessary to believe that an actual 
 diminution of population is attested by these declining numbers, 
 the conclusion which they do exhibit is hardly less serious from an 
 economic and political point of view. They show that portions of 
 the well-to-do classes were ceasing to possess the property which 
 entitled them to entrance into the regulai* army, and that the ranks 
 of the poorer proletariate were being swelled by their impoverish- 
 ment. It is possible that such impoverishment may have been 
 welcomed as a boon by the wearied veterans of Rome and their 
 descendants. It meant exemption from the heavier burdens of 
 military service, and, if it went further still, it implied immunity 
 from the tribute as long as direct taxes were collected from Roman 
 citizens.^ As long as service remained a burden on wealth, how- 
 ever moderate, there could have been little inducement to the man 
 of small means to struggle up to a standard of moderately increased 
 pecuniary comfort, which would certainly be marred and might be 
 lost by the personal inconvenience of the levy. 
 
 The decline in the numbers of the wealthier classes is thus at- 
 tested by the census rolls. But indications can also be given which 
 afford a slight probability that there was a positive diminution in 
 the free population of Rome and perhaps of Italy. The carnage 
 of the Hannibalic war may easily be overemphasised as a source of 
 positive decline. Such losses are rapidly made good when war is 
 followed by the normal industrial conditions which success, or even 
 failure, may bring. But, as we shall soon see reason for believing 
 that these industrial conditions were not wholly resumed in Italy, 
 the Second Punic War may be regarded as having produced a gap 
 in the population which was never entirely refilled. We find 
 evidences of tracts of country which were not annexed by the rich 
 but could not be repeopled by the poor. The pohcy pursued by 
 the decaying Empire of settHng foreign colonists on Italian soil had 
 already occurred to the statesmen of Rome in the infancy of her 
 imperial expansion. In 180 b.c. 40,000 Ligurians belonging to the 
 Apuanian people were dragged from their homes with their wives 
 
 ' Besides the proletarii all under military age would be excluded firom these 
 lists. Mommsen (Staatsr. ii. p. 411) goes further and thinks that the seniores are 
 not included in our lists. 
 
 ''The limit to the incidence of taxation was a property of 1500 asses {Cic.de 
 Rep. ii. 22. 40), the limit of census for military service was by the time of Polybius 
 reduced to 4000 asses (Polyb. vi. 19). Gellius (xvi. 10. 10) gives a reduction to 375 
 asses at a date unknown but preceding the Marian reform. Perhaps the numerals 
 are incorrect and should be 3,750. 
 
62 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 and children and settled on some public land of Rome which lay in 
 the territory of the Samnites. The consuls were commissioned to 
 divide up the land in allotments, and money was voted to the 
 colonists to defray the expense of stocking their new farms.^ Al- 
 though the leading motive for this transference was the preserva- 
 tion of peace amongst the Ligurian tribes, yet it is improbable 
 that the senate would have preferred the stranger to its kindred 
 had there been an outcry from the landless proletariate to be 
 allowed to occupy and retain the devastated property of the State. 
 But moral motives are stronger even than physical forces in check- 
 ing the numerical progress of a race. Amongst backward peoples 
 unusual indulgence and consequent disease may lead to the diminu- 
 tion or even extinction of the stock ; amongst civilised peoples the 
 motives which attain this result are rather prudential, and are con- 
 cerned with an ideal of life which perhaps increases the efficiency 
 of the individual, but builds up his healthy and pleasurable environ- 
 ment at the expense of the perpetuity of the race. The fact that 
 the Roman and Italian physique was not degenerating is abundantly 
 proved by the military history of the last hundred years of the Re- 
 public. This is one of the greatest periods of conquest in the 
 history of the world. The Italy, whom we are often inclined to 
 think of as exhausted, could still pour forth her myriads of valiant 
 sons to the confines marked by the Rhine, the Euphrates and the 
 Sahara ; and the struggle of the civil wars,- which followed this ex- 
 pansion, was the clash of giants. But this vigour was accompanied 
 by an ideal, whether of irresponsibility or of comfort, which gave 
 rise to the growing habit of celibacy — a habit which was to stir 
 the eloquence of many a patriotic statesman and finally lead to the 
 intervention of the law. When the censor of 131 uttered the 
 memorable exhortation " Since nature has so ordained that we can- 
 not live comfortably with a wife nor live at all without one, you 
 should hold the eternal safety of the State more dear than your 
 own brief pleasure," ^ it is improbable that he was indulging in 
 conscious cynicism, although there may have been a trace of 
 conscious humour in his words. He was simply bending to the 
 ideal of the people whom he saw, or imagined to be, before him. 
 The ideal was not necessarily bad, as one that was concerned 
 with individual life. It implied thrift, forethought, comfort— even 
 efficiency of a kind, for the unmarried man was a more likely 
 
 1 Liv. xl. 38. 2 Gell. i. 6. C/. Liv. Ef. lix. 
 
INCREASE OF CELIBACY 63 
 
 recruit than the father of a family. But it sacrificed too much — 
 the future to the present ; it ignored the undemonstrable duty 
 which a man owes to the permanent idea of the State through 
 working for a future which he shall never see. It rested partly on 
 a conviction of security ; but that feeling of security was the most 
 perilous sign of all. 
 
 The practice of celibacy generally leads to irregular attach- 
 ments between the sexes. In a society ignorant of slavery, such 
 attachments, as giving rise to social inconveniences far greater 
 than those of marriage, are usually shunned on prudential grounds 
 even where moral motives are of no avail. But the existence in 
 Italy of a large class of female dependants, absolutely outside the 
 social circle of the citizen body, rendered the attachment of the 
 master to his slave girl or to his freedwoman fatally easy and un- 
 embarrassing. It was unfortunately as attractive as it was easy. 
 Amidst the mass of servile humanity that had drifted to Italy from 
 most of the queirters of the world there was scarcely a type that 
 might not reproduce some strange and wonderful beauty. And 
 the charm of manner might be secured as readily as that of face 
 and form. The Hellenic East must often have exhibited in its 
 women that union of wit, grace and supple tact which made even 
 its men so irresistible to their Roman masters. The courtesans of 
 the capital, whether of high or low estate,^ are from the point of 
 view which we are considering not nearly so important as the 
 permanent mistress or "concubine" of the man who might dwell 
 in any part of Italy. It was the latter, not the former, that was 
 the true substitute for the wife. There is reason to believe that 
 it was about this period that " concubinage " became an institution 
 which was more than tolerated by society.^ The relation which it 
 implied between the man and his companion, who was generally 
 one of his freedwomen, was sufficiently honourable. It excluded 
 the idea of union with any other woman, whether by marriage or 
 temporary association ; it might be more durable than actual wed- 
 lock, for facilities for divorce were rapidly breaking the permanence 
 
 ' See Wallon Hist, de I'Esclavage ii. p. 276. 
 
 2 Concuhinatus could not, by the nature of the case, become a legal conception 
 until the Emperor Augustus had devised penalties for stuprum. It was theii 
 necessary to determine what kind of stuprum was not punishable. But the social 
 institution and its ethical characteristics, although they may have been made more 
 definite by legal regulations, could not have originated in the time of the Principate. 
 For the meaning oipaelex in Republican times see Meyer Der romische Konkubmat 
 and a notice of that work in the English Historical Review for July 1896. 
 
64 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 of the latter bond; it might satisfy the juristic condition of 
 " marital affection " quite as fully as the type of union to which 
 law or religion gave its blessing. But it differed from marriage in 
 one point of vital importance for the welfare of the State. Children 
 might be the issue of concubinatus, but they were not looked on 
 as its end. Such unions were not formed liber'Am quaerendorvm 
 causa. 
 
 The decline, or at least the stationary character, of the popula- 
 tion may thus be shown to be partly the result of a cause at once 
 social and economic ; for this particular social evil was the result 
 of the economic experiment of the extended use of slavery as a 
 means of production. This extension was itself partly the result of 
 the accidents of war and conquest, and in fact, throughout this 
 picture of the change which was passing over Italy, we can never 
 free ourselves from the spectres of militarism and hegemony. But 
 an investigation of the more purely economic aspects of the indus- 
 trial life of the period affords a clear revelation of the fact that the 
 effects of war and conquest were merely the foundation, accident- 
 ally presented, of a new method of production, which was the result 
 of deliberate design and to some extent of a conscious imitation of 
 systems which had in turn built up the colossal wealth, and assisted 
 the political decay, of older civilisations with which Rome was now 
 brought into contact. The new ideal was that of the large planta- 
 tion or latifundium supervised by skilled overseers, worked by 
 gangs of slaves with carefully differentiated duties, guided by scien- 
 tific rules which the hoary experience of Asia and Carthage had 
 devised, but, in unskilled Roman hands, perhaps directed with a 
 reckless energy that, keeping in view the vast and speedy returns 
 which could only be given by richer soils than that of Italy, was as 
 exhaustive of the capacities of the land as it was prodigal of the 
 human energy that was so cheaply acquu-ed and so wastefully 
 employed. The East, Carthage and Sicily had been the successive 
 homes of this system, and the Punic ideal reached Rome just at the 
 moment when the tendency of the free peasantry to quit their hold- 
 ings as unprofitable, or to sell them to pay their debts, opened the 
 way for the organisation of husbandry on the grand Carthaginian 
 model.i The opportunity was naturally seized with the utmost 
 eagerness by men whose wants were increasing, whose incomes must 
 
 ' Cunningham Western Civilisation p. 156. Cf. Soltau in Kulturgesch. des 
 klass. Altertums p. 318. 
 
GROWTH OF LARGE ESTATES 66 
 
 be made to keep pace with these wants, and whose wealth must 
 inevitably be dependent mainly on the produce of the soil. Yet 
 we have no warrant for accusing the members of the Roman nobility 
 of a deliberate plan of campaign stimulated by conscious greed and 
 selfishness. For a time they may not have known what they were 
 doing. Land was falling in and they bought it up ; domains be- 
 longing to the State were so unworked as to be falling into the 
 condition of rank jungle and pestilent morass. They cleared and 
 improved this land with a view to their own profit and the profit of 
 the State. Free labour was unattainable or, when attained, em- 
 barrassing. They therefore bought their labour in the cheapest 
 market, this market being the product of the wars and slave-raids 
 of the time. They acted, in fact, as every enlightened capitalist 
 would act under similar circumstances. It seemed an age of the 
 revival of agriculture, not of its decay. The official class was filled 
 with a positive enthusiasm for new and improved agricultural 
 methods. The great work of the Carthaginian Mago was trans- 
 lated by order of the senate.^ Few of the members of that body 
 would have cared to follow the opening maxim of the great expert, 
 that if a man meant to settle in the country he should begin by 
 selling his house in town ; ^ the men of affairs did not mean to be- 
 come gentlemen farmers, and it was the hope of profitable invest- 
 ment for the purpose of maintaining their dignity in the capital, 
 not the rustic ideal of the primitive Roman, that appealed to their 
 souls. But they might have hoped that most of the golden pre- 
 cepts of the twenty-eight books, which unfolded every aspect of the 
 science of the management of land, would be assimilated by the 
 intelligent baUiff", and they may even have been influenced by a 
 patriotic desire to reveal to the small holder scientific methods of 
 tillage, which might stave off the ruin that they deplored as 
 statesmen and exploited as individuals. But the lessons were 
 thrown away on the small cultivator ; they probably presupposed 
 the possession of capital and labour which were far beyond his 
 reach; and science may have played but little part even in the 
 accumulations of the rich, although the remarkable spectacle of 
 
 ' Plin. H. N, xviii. 3. 22 ; Varro R. R. i. i. 10. 
 
 'Colum. I. I. 18. The Latin translation was probably made shortly after the 
 destruction of Carthage, circa 140 B.C. (Mahaffy The Work of Mago on Agriculture 
 in Hermathena vol. vii. i8go). Mahaffy believes that the Greek translation by 
 Cassius Dionysius (Varro R. R. i. i. 10) was later, and he associates it with the 
 colonies planted by C. Gracchus in Southern Italy. 
 
 5 
 
66 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 small holdings, under the personal supervision of peasant proprietors, 
 being unable to hold their own against plantations and ranches 
 managed by bailiffs and worked by slaves, does suggest that some 
 improved methods of cultivation were adopted on the larger estates. 
 The rapidity with which the plantation system spread must have 
 excited the astonishment even of its promoters. Etruria, in spite 
 of the fact that three colonies of Roman citizens had lately been 
 founded within its borders,^ soon showed one continuous series of 
 great domains stretching from town to town, with scarcely a 
 village to break the monotonous expanse of its self-tilled plains. 
 Little more than forty years had elapsed since the final settlement 
 of the last Roman colony of Luna when a young Roman noble, 
 travelling along the Etruscan roads, strained his eyes in vain to find 
 a free labourer, whether cultivator or shepherd.^ In this part of 
 Italy it is probable that Roman enterprise was not the sole, or even 
 the main, cause of the wreckage of the country folk. The territory 
 had always been subject to local influences of an aristocratic kind ; 
 but the Etruscan nobles had stayed their hand as long as a free 
 people might help them to regain their independence.^ Now sub- 
 jection had crushed all other ambition but that of gain and personal 
 splendour, while the ravages of the Hannibalic war had made the 
 peasantry an easy victim of the wholesale purchaser. Farther south, 
 in Bruttii and Apulia, the hand of Rome had co-operated with the 
 scourge of war to produce a like result. The confiscations effected 
 in the former district as a punishment for its treasonable relations 
 with Hannibal,* the suitability of the latter for grazing purposes, 
 which had early made it the largest tract of land in Italy patrolled 
 by the shepherd slave,^ had swept village and cultivator away, and 
 left through whole day's journeys but vast stretches of pasture be- 
 tween the decaying towns. 
 
 For barrenness and desolation were often the results of the new 
 and improved system of management. There were tracts of country 
 which could not produce cereals of an abundance and quality cap- 
 able of competing with the com imported from the provinces ; but 
 
 ' Saturnia in 183 (Liv. xxxix. 55), Graviscae in 181 (Liv. xl. 29), Luna in 180 
 and again in 177 (Liv. xli. 13 ; Mommsen in C. I. L. i. n. 539). See Marquardt 
 Staatsverw. i. p. 39. 
 
 2 Plut. Ti. Gracch. 8 ; Nitzsch Die Gracchen p. 198. 
 
 * Nitzsch Die Gracchen p. 198. * P. 68. 
 
 " Liv. xxxix. 29. For the slave revolt of 185 B.C., whigh is here described, see 
 p. 88, 
 
GROWTH OF PASTURAGE 67 
 
 even on territories where crops could be reared productively, it was 
 tempting to substitute for the arduous processes of sowing and reap- 
 ing the cheaper and easier industry of the pasturage of flocks. We 
 do not know the extent to which arable land in fair condition was 
 deliberately turned into pasturage ; but we can imagine many cases 
 in which the land recently acquired by capitalists, whether from 
 the State or from smaller holders, was in such a condition, either 
 from an initial lack of cultivation or from neglect or from the 
 ravages of war, that the new propietor may well have shrunk from 
 the doubtful enterprise of sinking his capital in the soil, for the 
 purpose of testing its productive qualities. In such cases it was 
 tempting to treat the great domain as a sheep-walk or cattle-ranch. 
 The initial expenses of preparation were small, the labour to be 
 employed was reduced to a minimum, the returns in proportion to 
 the expenses were probably far larger than could be gained from 
 corn, even when grown under the most favourable conditions. The 
 great diiBculty in the way of cattle-rearing on a large scale in earlier 
 times had been the treatment of the flocks and herds dm'ing the 
 winter months. The necessity for providing stalls and fodder for 
 this period must have caused the proprietor to limit the heads of 
 cattle which he cared to possess. But this constraint had vanished 
 at once when a stretch of warm coast-line could be found, on which 
 the flocks could pasture without feeling the rigour of the winter 
 season. Conversely, the cattle-rearer who possessed the advantage 
 of such a line of coast would feel his difficulties beginning when the 
 summer months approached. The plains of the Campagna and 
 Apulia could have been good neither for man nor beast during 
 the torrid season. The full condition which freed a grazier from 
 all embarrassment and rendered him careless of limiting the size 
 of his flocks, was the combined possession of pastures by the sea for 
 winter use, and of glades in the hills for pasturage in summer.^ 
 Neither the men of the hills nor the men of the plains, as long as 
 they formed independent communities, could become graziers on an 
 extensive scale, and it has been pointed out that even a Greek 
 settlement of the extent of Sybaris had been forced to import its 
 wool from the Black Sea through Miletus.^ But when Rome had 
 
 'Varro R. R. ii. S- " Pascuntur armenta commodissime in nemoribus, ubi 
 virgulta et frons multa. Hieme secundum mare, aestu abiguntur in montes 
 frondosos. 
 
 ^ Nltzsch Die Gracchen p. i6. 
 
68 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 won the Apennines and extended her influence over the coast, there 
 were no limits to the extent to which cattle rearing could be carried.' 
 It became perhaps the most gigantic enterprise connected with the 
 soil of Italy. Its cheapness and efficiency appealed to every practical 
 mind. Cato, who had a sentimental attachment to agriculture, was 
 bound in honesty to reply to the question " What is the best manner 
 of investment .? " by the words " Good pasturage". To the question 
 as to the second-best means he answered "Tolerable pasturage". 
 When asked to declare the third, he replied "Bad pasturage". 
 To ploughing he would assign only the fourth place in the descend- 
 ing scale.^ Bruttii and Apulia were the chief homes of the ranch 
 and the fold. The Lucanian conquest of the former country must, 
 even at a time preceding the Roman domination, have formed a 
 connection between the mountains and the plains, and pasturage on 
 a large scale in the mountain glades of the Bruttian territory may 
 have been an inheritance rather than a creation of the Romans ; hut 
 the ruin caused in this district by the Second Punic War, the an- 
 nexation to the State of large tracts of rebel land,* and the reduction 
 of large portions of the population to the miserable serf -like con- 
 dition of dediticii,* must have offered the capitalists opportunities 
 which they could not otherwise have secured ; and both here and 
 in Apulia the tendency to extend the grazing system to its utmost 
 limits must have advanced with terrible rapidity since the close 
 of the Hannibalic war. It was the East coast of Southern Italy 
 that was chiefly surrendered to this new form of industry, and we 
 may observe a somewhat sharp distinction between the pastoral 
 activity of these regions and the agricultural life which still con- 
 tinued, although on a diminished scale, in the Western districts.* 
 ■^ We have already made occasional reference to the accidents on 
 which the new industrial methods that created the latifundia were 
 designedly based. It is now necessary to examine these accidents 
 
 1 Nitzsch op. cit. p. 17. 
 
 ^ Cic. de Off. ii. 25. 89. So in Cato's more reasoned estimate (/?. R. i. 7) of the 
 relative degrees of productivity, although vinea comes first (cf. p. 80) yet pratum 
 precedes campus frumentarius. 
 
 ^ App. Hannib. 61. ■* App. I.e. ; Gell. x. 3. 19. 
 
 ' Nitzsch Die Gracchen p. 193 So zerfiel denn Mittelitalien in zwei scharf- 
 getheilte Half ten, den ackerbauenden Westen und den viehzuchttreibenden Osten; 
 jener reich an Hafen, von Landstrassen durchschnitten, in einer menge von Colonien 
 Oder einzelnen Gehoften von Romischen Ackerbiirgern bewohnt ; dieser fast ohne 
 Hafen, nur von einer Kustenstrasse durchschnitten, fiir den grossen Romer der rechte 
 Sitz seiner Sclaven und Heerden. Cf. p. 21. For the pasturage in Calabria and 
 Apulia see op. cit. pp. 13 and 193. 
 
CHANGES IN LAND TENURE 69 
 
 in greater detail, if only for the purpose of preparing the ground 
 for a future estimate of the efficacy of the remedies suggested by 
 statesmen for a condition of things which, however naturally and 
 even honestly created, was deplorable both on social and political 
 grounds. The causes which had led to the change from one form 
 of tenure and cultivation to another of a widely different kind 
 required to be carefully probed, if the Herculean task of a reversion 
 to the earlier system was to be attempted. The men who essayed 
 the task had unquestionably a more perfect knowledge of the 
 causes of the change than can ever be possessed by the student of 
 to-day ; but criticism is easier than action, and if it is hot to become 
 shamelessly facile, every constraining element in the complicated 
 problem which is at all recoverable (all those elements so clearly 
 seen by the hard-headed and honest Roman reformers, but known 
 by them to possess an invulnerability that we have forgotten) must 
 be examined by the historian in the blundering analysis which is 
 all that is permitted by his imperfect information, and still more 
 imperfect realisation, of the temporary forces that are the mill- 
 stones of a scheme of reform. 
 
 The havoc wrought by the Hannibalic invasion ^ had caused 
 even greater damage to the land than to the people. The latter 
 had been thinned but the former had been wasted, and in some 
 cases wasted, as events proved, almost beyond repair. The devas- 
 tation had been especially great in Southern Italy, the nations of 
 which had clung to the Punic invader to the end. But such results 
 of war are transitory in the extreme, if the numbers and energy of 
 the people who resume possession of their wrecked homes are not 
 exhausted, and if the conditions of production and sale are as 
 favourable after the calamity as they were before. The amount of 
 wealth which an enemy can injure, lies on the mere surface of the soil, 
 and is an insignificant fraction of that which is stored in the bosom 
 of the earth, or guaranteed by a favourable commercial situation 
 and access to the sea. Carthage could pay her war indemnity and, 
 in the course of half a century, afiright Cato by her teeming wealth 
 and fertility. Her people had resumed their old habits, bent whole- 
 heartedly to the only life they loved, and the prizes of a crowded 
 haven and bursting granaries were the result. If a nation does not 
 recover from such a blow, there must be some permanent defect in 
 its economic life or some fatal flaw in its administrative system. 
 
 1 Liv. xxviii. ii ; cf. Luc. Phars. i. 30. 
 
10 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 The devastation caused by war merely accelerates the process of 
 decay by creating a temporary impoverishment, which reveals the 
 severity of the preceding struggle for existence and renders hopeless 
 its resumption. Certainly the great war of which Italy had been 
 the theatre did mark such an epoch in the history of its agricultural 
 life. A lack of productivity began to be manifested, for which, 
 T however, subsequent economic causes were mainly responsible. The 
 lack of intensity, which is a characteristic of slave labour, lessened 
 the returns, while the secondary importance attached to the 
 manuring of the fields was a vicious principle inherent in the agri- 
 cultural precepts of the time.^ But it is probable that from this 
 epoch there were large tracts of land the renewed cultivation of 
 which was never attempted ; and these were soon increased by 
 domains which yielded insufficient returns and were gradually 
 abandoned. The Italian peasant had ever had a hard fight with 
 the insalubrity of his soil. Fever has always been the dreaded 
 goddess of the environs of Rome. But constant labour and effective 
 drainage had kept the scourge at bay, until the evil moment came 
 when the time of the peasant was absorbed, and his energy spent, in 
 the toils of constant war, when his land was swallowed up in the vast 
 estates that had rapid profits as their end and careless slaves as 
 their cultivators. Then the moist fields gave out their native pesti- 
 lence, and malaria reigned unchecked over the fairest portion of 
 the Italian plain.^ 
 
 One of the leading economic causes, which had led to the 
 failure of a certain class of the Italian peasant-proprietors, was the 
 competition to which they were exposed from the provinces. Borne 
 herself had begun to rely for the subsistence of her increasing 
 population on com imported from abroad, and many of the large 
 coast-towns may have been forced to follow her example. The 
 corn-producing powers of the MediteiTanean lands had now de- 
 finitely shifted from the regions of the East and North to those of 
 
 > Dureau de la Malle (Economic Politique ii. p. 58) compares the precept of the 
 Roman "Quid est agrum bene colere ? bene arare. Quid secundum? arare. 
 Tertio stercorare " with the adage of the French farmer " Fumez bien, lahourez mal, 
 vous recueillerez plus qu'en fumant mal et en labourant bien ". 
 
 ^ See Dreyfus Les lots agraires p. 97. Varro (R. R. i. 12. 2) is singularly correct 
 in his account of the nature of the disease that arose from the loca palustria ;— 
 Crescunt animalia quaedam minuta, quae non possunt oculi consequi, et per aera 
 intus in corpus per os ac nares perveniunt atque efficiunt difficilis morbos. The 
 passage is cited by Voigt (Iwan-Miiller's Handbuch iv. 2. p. 358) who gives a good 
 sketch of the evils consequent on neglect of drainage. 
 
IMPORTATION OF CORN 71 
 
 the South.^ Greece, which had been barely able to feed itself 
 during the most flourishing period of its history, could not under 
 any circumstances have possessed an importance as a country of 
 export for Italy ; but the economic evils which had fallen on this 
 unhappy land are worthy of observation, as presenting a forecast of 
 the fate which was in store for Rome. The decline in population, 
 which could be attributed neither to war nor pestilence, the grow- 
 ing celibacy and childlessness of its sparse inhabitants,^ must have 
 been due to an agricultural revolution similar to that which was 
 gradually being effected on Italian soil. The plantation system 
 and the wholesale employment of slave labour must have swept 
 across the Aegean from their homes in Asia Minor. Here their 
 existence is sufficiently attested by the servile rising which was to 
 assume, shortly after the tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus, the pre- 
 tended form of a dynastic war; and the troubles which always 
 attended the collection of the Asiatic tithes, in the days when a 
 Roman province had been established in those regions, give no 
 favourable impression of the agricultural prosperity of the countries 
 which lay between the Taurus and the sea. As far south as Sicily 
 there was evidence of exhaustion of the land, and of unnatural condi- 
 tions of production, which excluded the mass of the free inhabitants 
 from participation both in labour and profits. But even Sicily had 
 learned from Carthage the evil lesson that Greece had acquired 
 from Asia; the plantation system had made vast strides in the 
 island, and the condition of the aratores, whether free-holders 
 or lessees, was not what it had been in the days of Diodes and 
 Timoleon. The growing economic dependence of Rome on Sicily 
 was by no means wholly due to any exceptional productive capaci- 
 ties in the latter, but was mainly the result of proximity, and of 
 administrative relations which enabled the government and the 
 speculator in com to draw definite and certain supplies of grain 
 from the Sicilian cultivators. This was true also, although to a 
 smaller degree, of Sardinia. But Sicily and Sardinia do mark the 
 beginning of the Southern zone of lands which were capable of filling 
 the markets of the Western world. It was the Northern coast of 
 Africa which rose supreme as the grain-producer of the time. In 
 the Carthaginian territory the natural absence of an agricultural 
 peasantry amidst a commercial folk, and the elaboration of a de- 
 
 ^ Nitzsch Die Gracchen p. 228. '^ Polyb. xxxvii. 4. 
 
72 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 finite science of agriculture, had neutralised the ill effects which 
 accompanied the plantation system amongst other peoples less 
 business-like and scientific ; the cultivators had shown no signs of 
 unrest and the soil no traces of exhaustion. It has been inferred 
 with some probabihty that the hostility of Cato, the friend of 
 agriculture and of the Italian yeoman, to the flourishing Punic 
 state was directed to some extent by the fear that the grain of 
 Africa might one day drive from the market the produce of the 
 Italian fields ; ^ and, if this view entered into the calculations which 
 produced the final Punic War, the very short-sightedness of the 
 policy which destroyed a state only to give its lands to African 
 cities and potentates or to Roman speculators, who might continue 
 the methods of the extinct community, is only too characteristic of 
 that t3rpe of economic jealousy which destroys an accidental pro- 
 duct and leaves the true cause of offence unassailed. The destruc- 
 tion of Carthage had, as a matter of fact, aggravated the danger ; 
 for the first use which Masinissa of Numidia made of the vast 
 power with which Rome had entrusted him, was an attempt to 
 civilise his people by turning them into cultivators ; ^ and the virgin 
 soil of the great country which stretched from the new boundaries of 
 Carthage to the confines of the Moors, was soon reckoned amongst 
 the competing elements which the Roman agriculturist had to fear. 
 But the force of circumstances caused the Sicilian and Sardinian 
 cultivator to be the most formidable of his immediate competitors. 
 The facility of transport from Sicily to Rome rendered that island 
 superior as a granary to even the more productive portions of the 
 Italian mainland. Sicily could never have revealed the marvellous 
 fertility of the valley of the Po, where a bushel and a half of wheat 
 could be purchased for five pence half-penny, and the same quantity 
 of barley was sold for half this price ; ^ but it was easier to get 
 Sicilian com to Rome by sea than to get Gallic com to Rome by 
 land ; and the system of taxation and requisitions which had grown 
 out of the provincial organisation of the island, rendered it pecu- 
 liarly easy to place great masses of corn on the Roman market at 
 very short notice. Occasionally the Roman government enforced a 
 sale of com from the province {frv/mentum emptuTn),* a reason- 
 able price being paid for the grain thus demanded for the city 
 
 1 Nitzsch Die Gracchen p. 237. 2 Polyb. xxxvii. 3. ^ Polyb. ii. 15. 
 
 * For such purchases from Sardinia see Liv. xxxvi. 2, from Sicily (at a period 
 later than that which we are considering) Cic. in Verr. iii. 70. 163. 
 
THE SYSTEM OF POSSESSION 7S 
 
 or the army ; but this was almost the only case in which the govern- 
 ment intervened to regulate supplies. In the ordinary course of 
 things the right to collect the tithes of the province was purchased 
 by public companies, who paid money, not grain, into the Roman 
 treasury, and these companies placed their corn on the market 
 as best they could. The operations of the speculators in grain 
 doubtless disturbed the price at times. But yet the certainty, the 
 abundance and the facilities for transport of this supply were such 
 as practically to shut out from competition in the Roman market 
 all but the most favourably situated districts of Italy. Their chance 
 of competition depended mainly on their accidental possession of 
 a good road, or their neighbourhood to the sea or to a navigable 
 river.^ The larger proprietors in any part of Italy must have 
 possessed gi-eater facilities for carrying their grain to a good market 
 than were enjoyed by the smaller holders. The Clodian law on 
 trade permitted senators to own sea-going ships of a certain ton- 
 nage;^ they could, therefore, export their own produce without 
 any dependence on the middle-man, while the smaller cultivators 
 would have been obliged to pay freight, or could only have avoided 
 such payment by forming shipping-companies amongst themselves. 
 But such combination was not to be looked for amongst a peasant 
 class, barely conscious even of the external symptoms of the great 
 revolution which was dragging them to ruin, and perhaps almost 
 wholly oblivious of its cause. 
 
 It required less penetration to fathom the second of the great 
 reasons for the accumulation of landed property in the hands of 
 the few; for this cause had been before the eyes of the Roman 
 world, and had been expounded by the lips of Roman statesmen, 
 for generations or, if we credit a certain class of traditions,^ even 
 for centuries. This cause of the growing monopoly of the land by 
 the few was the system of possession which the State had encouraged, 
 for the purpose of securing the use and cultivation of its public 
 domain. The policy of the State seems to have changed from time 
 to time with reference to its treatment of this particular portion 
 of its property, which it valued as the most secure of its assets 
 
 1 C/. Cato R. R.i.3 (In choosing the situation of one's estate) oppidum validum 
 prope siet aut mare aut amnis, qua naves ambulant, aut via bona celebrisque. 
 
 2 P. 33. 
 
 8 For the traditions which assign a very early date for laws dealing with the 
 agerpublicus see the following chapter, which treats of the legislation of Tiberius 
 Gracchus. 
 
74 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 and one that served, besides its financial end, the desirable purpose 
 of assisting it to maintain the influence of Rome throughout 
 almost every part of Italy. When conquered domain had first 
 been declared "public," the government had been indifferent to 
 the type of occupier which served it by squatting on this territory 
 and reclaiming land that had not been divided or sold chiefly 
 because its condition was too unattractive to invite either of these 
 processes.^ It had probably extended its invitation even to Latin 
 allies,^ and looked with approval on any member of the burgess 
 body who showed his enterprise and patriotism by the performance 
 of this great public service. If the State had a partiality, it was 
 probably for the richer and more powerful classes of its citizens. 
 They could embrace a greater quantity of land in their grasp, and 
 so save the trouble which attended an estimate of the returns of 
 a great number of small holdings; they possessed more effective 
 means of reclaiming waste or devastated land, for they had a 
 greater control of capital and labour ; lastly, through their large 
 bands of clients and slaves, they had the means of efficiently pro- 
 tecting the land which they had occupied, and this must have 
 been an important consideration at a time when large tracts of 
 the ager publicus lay amidst foreign territories which were barely 
 pacified, and were owned by communities that often wavered in their 
 allegiance to Rome. But, whatever the views of the government, 
 it is tolerably clear that the original occupiers must have chiefly 
 represented men of this stamp. These were the days when the 
 urban and the rustic tribes were sharply divided, as containing 
 respectively the men of the town and the men of the country, and 
 when there were comparatively few of the latter folk that did not 
 possess some holding of their own. It was improbable that a 
 townsman would often venture on the unfamiliar task of taking 
 up waste land ; it was almost as improbable that a small yeoman 
 would find leisure to add to the unaided labour on his own holding 
 the toil of working on new and unpromising soil, except in the 
 cases where some unclaimed portion of the public domain was in 
 close proximity to his estate. 
 
 'App. Bell. Civ. i. 7 rrjs Si yris ttjs SopiicrlfTOv <r<pt<riv fKiaron yiyvoiiivris TJ)y 
 fiie ^eipyacr/ihriv aiirlKa roh omi^o/iivois iinSi'^povv i) MirpatTKOv % i^e/dcrBow, tMv 
 S" ^yhv fK rov iro\4nov Tiire oS(rav, 1) 8^ koX fulMffra ^7r\^fluei/, ouk Hyovres ttco ffxoXV 
 SiaKaxf'i', ineK'tipuTTov iv ror^Se rots i0e\oviTiv iKVOviiv iirX reKet rap intaiuv Kapnav. 
 
 ^For the evidence for this and other statements connected with the ager 
 publicus see the citations in the next chapter. 
 
EARLY AGRARIAN LEGISLATION 76 
 
 We may, therefore, infer that from very early times the wealthier 
 classes had asserted themselves as the chief occupiers of the public 
 domain. And this condition of things continued to be unchallenged 
 until a time came ^ when the small holders, yielding to the pressure 
 of debt and bankruptcy, sought their champions amongst the 
 tribunes of the Plebs. The absolute control of the public domain 
 by the State, the absolute insecurity of the tenure of its occupants, 
 furnished an excellent opportunity for staving off schemes of con- 
 fiscation and redistribution of private property, such as had often 
 shaken the communities of Greece, and even for refusing to tamper 
 with the existing law of debtor and creditor.^ It was imagined 
 that bankrupt yeomen might be relieved by being allowed to settle 
 on the public domain, or that the resumption or retention of a 
 portion of this domain by the State might furnish an opportunity 
 for the foundation of fresh colonies, and a law was passed limiting 
 the amount of the ager publicus that any individual might possess. 
 The enactment, whatever its immediate results may have been, 
 proved ineifective as a means of checking the growth of large 
 possessions. No special commission was appointed to enforce 
 obedience to its terms, and their execution was neglected by the 
 ordinary magistrates. The provisions of the law were, indeed, never 
 forgotten, but as a rule they were remembered only to be evaded. 
 Devious methods were adopted of holding public land through per- 
 sons who seemed to be bond fide possessors in their own right, but 
 were in reality merely agents of some planter who already held 
 land up to the permitted limit.^ Then came the agricultural crisis 
 which followed the Punic Wars. The small freeholds, mortgaged, 
 deserted or selling for a fraction of their value, began to fall into 
 the meshes of the vast net which had spread over the pubUc 
 domain. In some cases actual violence is said to have been used 
 to the smaller yeomen by their neighbouring tyrants,* and we can 
 readily imagine that, when a holding had been deserted for a time 
 
 1 In consequence of the doubtfulness of the traditions concerning early agrarian 
 laws this time cannot even be approximately specified. See the next chapter. 
 
 2 Tradition represents the first laws dealing with the ager publicus {e.g. the sup- 
 posed lex Licinia) as earlier than the lex Poetelia of 326 B.C., which abolished the 
 contract of nexum. 
 
 ' Plut. Ti. Gracch. 8 So-repoc Se raiv yfirvuivTiiiv Tr\ov<rluv (nro^KiiTaiS trpoa^irois 
 fi€Ta(f>ep6vttoy ras fiL<r6(ia'ets eis eavTovs. 
 
 * App. Bell. Civ. i. 7 ol yhp irAoiffioi . . . t4 . . . viyxov atpunv, Utra re ifv S.\\a 
 jSpavea nejrliTav, Tck /ih avoifievoi ireiBoi to Sk $ltf Ka/ifidvovres, ireSla ixwcpk wtI 
 Xwpiav iyeiipyovi'. Cf. Seneca Ep. xiv. 2 (go ). 39 Licet agros agris adjiciat vicinum 
 vel pretio pellens vel injuria. 
 
76 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 through stress of war or military service, it might be difficult to 
 resume possession in the face of effective occupation by the bailiff 
 of some powerful neighbour. The latifwndium — acquired, as it 
 was believed, in many cases by force, fraud and shameless violation 
 of the law — was becoming the standard unit of cultivation through- 
 out Italy.^ When we consider the general social and economic cir- 
 cumstances of the time, it is possible to imagine that large properties 
 would have grown in Italy, as in Greece, had Rome never possessed 
 an inch of public domain ; but the occupation of ager publicus by 
 the rich is very important from two points of view. On the one 
 hand, it unquestionably accelerated the process of the formation of 
 vast estates ; and a renewed impulse had lately been given to this 
 process by the huge confiscations in the South of Italy, and perhaps 
 by the conquest of Cisalpine Gaul ; for it is improbable that the 
 domain possessed by the State in this fertile country had been 
 wholly parcelled out amongst the colonies of the northern frontier.^ 
 But on the other hand, the fact that the kernel of these estates was 
 composed of public land in excess of the prescribed limit seemed 
 to make resumption by the State and redistribution to the poor 
 legally possible. The ager publicus, therefore, formed the basis 
 for future agitation and was the rallying point for supporters and 
 opponents of the proposed methods of agricultural reform. 
 
 But it was not merely the negligence of the State which led to 
 the crushing of the small man by the great ; the positive burdens 
 which the government was forced to impose by the exigencies of 
 the career of conquest and hegemony into which Rome had drifted, 
 rendered the former an almost helpless competitor in the uneven 
 struggle. The conscription had from early days been a source of 
 impoverishment for the commons and of opportunity for the rich. 
 The foi-mer could obey the summons of the State only at the risk of 
 pledging his credit, or at least of seeing his homestead drift into a 
 condition of neglect which would bring the inevitable day when it 
 
 ■ irfSla nixpa (App. I.e.), Plin. H. N. xviii. 6. 35 Verumque confitentibus 
 latifundia perdidere Italiam. (For the expression lafi fundi see Siculus Flaccus 
 PP- ^57> 161). Frontinus p. 53 Per longum enim tempus attigui possessores vacantia 
 loca quasi invitante otiosi soli opportunitate invaserunt, et per longum tempus in- 
 pune commalleaverunt. For the invasion of pasturage see Frontinus p. 48 Haec 
 fere pascua certis personis data sunt depascenda tunc cum agri adsignati sunt. 
 Haec pascua multi per inpotentiam invaserunt et colunt. 
 
 ^In spite of the fertility of the land, the native Gallic population had vanished 
 from most of the districts of this region as early as Polybius' time (Polyb. ii. 35). 
 Cf. Nitzsch Die Gracchen p. 60. 
 
THE CONSCRIPTION 77 
 
 could only be rehabilitated by a loan of seed or money. The lot of the 
 warrior of moderate means was illustrated by the legend of Regulus. 
 He was believed to have written home to the consuls asking to be 
 relieved of his command in Africa. The bailiff whom he had left 
 on his estate of seven jugera was dead, the hired man had stolen 
 the implements of agriculture and run away ; the farm lay desolate 
 and, were its master not permitted to return, his wife and children 
 would lack the barest necessaries of existence.^ The struggle to 
 maintain a household in the absence of its head was becoming more 
 acute now that corn-land was ceasing to pay, except under the most 
 favourable conditions, and now that the demand for conscripts was 
 sometimes heavier and always more continuous than it had ever 
 been before. Perhaps one-tenth of the adult male population of 
 Rome was always in the field ; ^ the units came and went, but the 
 men who bore the brunt of the long campaigns and of garrison duty 
 in the provinces were those to whom leisure meant life — the yeomen 
 who maintained their place in the census lists by hardy toil, and 
 who risked their whole subsistence through the service that had 
 been wrested from them as a reward for a laborious career. When 
 they ceased to be owners of their land, they found it difficult to 
 secure places even as labourers on some rich man's property. The 
 landholder preferred the services of slaves which could not be inter- 
 rupted by the call of military duty.^ 
 
 The economic evils consequent on the conscription must have 
 been felt with hardly less severity by such of the Italian allies as 
 lived in the regions within which the latifundia were growing up. 
 To these were added the pecuniary burdens which Rome had been 
 forced to impose during the Second Punic War. These burdens were 
 for the most part indirect, for Rome did not tax her Italian socii, 
 but they were none the less severe. Every contingent supplied from 
 an allied community had its expenses, except that of food during 
 service, defrayed from the treasury of its own state,* and ten con- 
 tinuous years of conscription and requisition had finally exhausted 
 the loyalty even of Rome's Latin kindred.' It is true that the 
 Italians were partially, although not wholly, free from the economic 
 
 ' Val. Max. iv. 4. 6. 
 
 ^ Steinwender Die romische Burgerschaft in ihrem Verhdltnis zum Heere p. 28. 
 
 ' App. Bell. Civ. i. 7. '' Polyb. vi. 39. 
 
 'Liv. xxvii. 9 (209 B.C.) Fremitus enim inter Latinos sociosque in conciliis 
 ortus:— Decimum annum dilectibus, stipendiis se exhaustos esse . . . Duodecim 
 (coloniae) . . . negaverunt consulibus esse unde milites pecuniamque darent. 
 
78 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 struggle between the possessors of the public land and the small 
 freeholders ; but there is no reason for supposing that those of 
 Western Italy were exempt from the consequences of the reduc- 
 tion in price that followed the import of corn from abroad, and the 
 drain on their incomes and services which had been caused by war 
 could scarcely have fitted them to stand this unexpected trial. 
 Rome's harsh dealings with the treasonable South, although adopted 
 for political motives, was almost unquestionably a political blunder. 
 She confiscated devastated lands, and so perpetuated their devasta- 
 tion. She left ruined harbours and cities in decay. She crippled 
 her own resources to add to the pastoral wealth of a handful of her 
 citizens. In the East of Italy there was a far greater vitality than 
 elsewhere in agriculture of the older type. The Samnites in their 
 mountains, the Peligni, Marrucini, Frentani and Vestini between the 
 Apennines and the sea still kept to the system of small freeholds. 
 Their peasantry had perhaps always cultivated for consumption 
 rather than for sale ; then- inhabitants were rather beyond the 
 reach of the ample supply from the South ; and for these reasons 
 the competition of Sicilian and African corn did not lead them to 
 desert their fields. They were also less exposed than the Romans 
 and Latins to the aggressions of the great possessor ; for, since they 
 possessed no coTnmercium with Rome, the annexation of their pro- 
 perty by legal means was beyond the reach even of the ingenious 
 cupidity of the times.^ The proof of the existence of the yeoman 
 in these regions is the danger which he caused to Rome. The 
 spirit which had maintained his economic independence was to aim 
 at a higher goal, and the struggle for equality of political rights 
 was to prove to the exclusive city the prowess of that class of 
 peasant proprietors which she had sacrificed in her own domains. 
 
 But, although this sacrifice had been great, we must not be led 
 into the belief that there was no hope for the agriculturist of 
 moderate means either in the present or in the future. Even in 
 the present there were clear indications that estates of moderate 
 size could under careful cultivation hold their own. The estate of 
 Lucius Manlius, which Cato sketches in his work on agriculture,^ 
 was far from rivalling the great demesnes of the princes of the land. 
 It consisted of 240 jugera devoted to the olive and of 100 jugera 
 reserved for the vine. Provision was made for a moderate supply of 
 
 1 Nitzsch Die Gracchen p. 194. 2 Cato R. R. 144 etc. 
 
PROSPECTS OF AGRICULTURE 79 
 
 corn and for pasturage for the cattle that worked upon the fields. 
 But the farm was on the whole a representative of the new spirit, 
 which saw in the vine and the olive a paying substitute for the 
 decadent culture of grain. Even on an estate of this size we note 
 as significant that the permanent and even the higher personnel of 
 the household (the latter being represented by the villici and the 
 villicae) was composed of slaves ; yet hirelings were needed for the 
 harvest and the corn was grown by cottagers who held their land on 
 a metayer tenure. But such an estate demanded unusual capital 
 as well as unusual care. On the tiny holdings, which were all that 
 the poorest could afford, the scanty retiu-ns might be eked out by 
 labour on the fields of others, for the small allotment did not 
 demand the undivided energies of its holder.^ There was besides a 
 class of politores ^ similar to that figured as cultivating the corn- 
 land on the estate of Manlius, who received in kind a wage on 
 which they could at least exist. They were nominally TnMayer 
 tenants who were provided with the implements of husbandry by 
 their landlord ; but the quantity of grain which they could reserve 
 to their own use was so small, varying as it did from a ninth to a 
 fifth of the whole of the crop which they had reaped,* that their 
 position was little better than that of the poorest labourer by the 
 day.* The humblest class of freemen might still make a living in 
 districts where pasturage did not reign supreme. But it was a 
 living that involved a sacrifice of independence and a submission to 
 sordid needs that were unworthy of the past ideal of Roman citizen- 
 ship. It was a living too that conferred little benefit on the State ; 
 for the day-labourers and the politores could scarcely have been in 
 the position on the census list which rendered them liable to the 
 conscription. 
 
 If it were possible to lessen the incidence of military service and 
 to secure land and a small amount of capital for the dispossessed, 
 the prospects for the future were by no means hopeless. The 
 smaller culture, especially the cultivation of the vine and the olive, 
 is that to which portions of Italy are eminently suited. This is 
 especially true of the great volcanic plain of the West extending 
 
 1 Nitzsch Die Gracchen p. 187. " Cato R. R. 5, 136. 
 
 ^Cato R. R. 136 Politionem quo pacto partiario dari oporteat. In agro 
 Casinate et Vena&o in loco bono parti octava corbi dividat, satis bono septima, 
 tertio loco sexta ; si granum modio dividet, parti quinta. In Venafro ager optimus 
 jiona parti corbi dividat . . . Hordeum quiiita modio, fabam quinta modio dividat, 
 
 * Nitzsch Die Gracchen p. 188, 
 
80 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 from the north of Etruria to the south of Campania and com- 
 prising, besides these territories, the countries of the Latins, the 
 Sabines, the Volsci and the Hernici. The lightness and richness of 
 the alluvion of this volcanic soil is almost as suited to the production 
 of cereals as to that of the vine and the olive or the growth of 
 vegetables.^ But, even on the assumption that corn-growing would 
 not pay, there was nothing to prevent, and everything to encourage 
 the development of the olive plantation, the vineyard and the 
 market garden throughout this region. It was a country sown 
 with towns, and the vast throat of Rome alone would cry for the 
 products of endless labour. Even Cato can place the vine and the 
 olive before grazing land and forest trees in the order of produc- 
 tivity,^ and before the close of the Republic the government had 
 learnt the lesson that the salvation of the Italian peasantry 
 depended on the cultivation of products like these. The con- 
 viction is attested by the protective edict that the culture of 
 neither the vine nor the olive was to be extended in Transalpine 
 Gaul.^ Market gardening was also to have a considerable future, 
 wherever the neighbourhood of the larger towns created a demand 
 for such supplies.* A new method of tenure also gave opportuni- 
 ties to those whose capital or circumstances did not enable them to 
 purchase a sufficient quantity of land of their own. Leaseholds 
 became more frequent, and the coloni thus created ^ began to take 
 an active share in the agricultural life of Italy. Like the villici, 
 they were a product of the tendency to live away from the estate ; 
 but they gained ground at the expense of the servile bailiffs, prob- 
 ably in consequence of their greater trustworthiness and keener 
 interest in the soil. 
 
 But time was needed to effect these changes. For the present the 
 reign of the capitalist was supreme, and the plantation system was 
 dominant throughout the greater part of Italy. The most essential 
 
 ' Dureau de la Malle &conomie Politique ii. pp. 225, 226. 
 
 ' Cato R. R. i. 7 Vinea est prima, . . . secundo loco hortus inriguus, tertio 
 salictum, quarto oletum, quinto pratum, sexto campus frumentarius, septimo silva 
 caedua, octavo arbustum, nono glandaria silva. 
 
 ' Cic. de Rep. iii. 9. 16 Nos vero justissimi homines, qui Transalpinas gentis 
 oleam et vitem serere non sinimus, quo pluris sint nostra oliveta nostraeque vineae. 
 Cf. Colum. iii. 3. 11. 
 
 * See Cato R. R. 7. 8 for the produce of the/wKdMs suburbanits. Cf. c. i (note 2) 
 for the value of the hortus inriguus. 
 
 " See the citations in Voigt (Iwan-Muller's Handbuch iv. 2 p. 370). Communities 
 and corporations employed coloni on their agri vectigales (Cic. ad Fam. xiii. 11. i ; 
 Hygin. de Cond. Agr. p. 117. 11; Voigt. I.e.), 
 
SLAVE LABOUR 81 
 
 ingredient in this system was the slave, — an alien and a chattel, indi- 
 vidually a thing of little account, but reckoned in his myriads the 
 most powerful factor in the economic, and therefore in the political, 
 life of the times, the gravest of the problems that startled the reformer. 
 The soil of Italy was now peopled with widely varied types, and echoes 
 of strange tongues from West and East could be heard on every hand. 
 Italy seemed a newly discovered country, on which the refuse of all 
 lands had been thrown to become a people that could never be a 
 nation. The home supply of slaves, so familiar as to seem a product 
 of the land, was becoming a mere trifle in comparison with the vast 
 masses that were being thrust amongst the peasantry by war and 
 piracy. At the time of the protest of Tiberius Gracchus against 
 the dominance of slave labour in the fields scarcely two generations 
 had elapsed since the great influx had begun. The Second Punic 
 War had spread to every quarter of the West ; Sicily, Sardinia, 
 Cisalpine Gaul and Spain all yielded their tribute in the form of 
 human souls that had passed from the victor to the dealer, from the 
 dealer to the country and the town. Only one generation had 
 passed since a great wave had swept from Epirus and Northern 
 Greece over the shores of Italy. In Epirus alone one hundred and 
 fifty thousand prisoners had been sold.^ Later still the destruction 
 of Carthage must have cast vast quantities of agricultural slaves 
 upon the market.^ Asia too had yielded up her captives as the 
 result of Roman victories ; but the Oriental visages that might be 
 seen in the streets of Rome or the plains of Sicily, were less often 
 the gift of regular war than of the piracy and the systematised 
 slave-hunting of the Eastern Mediterranean. Rome, who had 
 crushed the rival maritime powers that had attempted, however 
 imperfectly, to police the sea, had been content with the work of 
 destruction, and seemed to care nothing for the enterprising buccan- 
 eers who sailed with impunity as far west as Sicily. The pirates 
 had also made themselves useful to the Oriental powers which still 
 retedned their independence ; they had been tolerated, if they had not 
 been employed, by Cyprus and Egypt when these states were struggl- 
 ing against the Empire of the Seleucids.^ But another reason for 
 their immunity was the view held in the ancient world that slave- 
 
 ' Liv. xlv. 34. 
 
 ' Mahaffy (" The Slave Wars against Rome " in Hermathena no. xvi. i8go) 
 believes that the majority of these were shipped to Sicily. 
 ' Strabo xiv. 5. 2. 
 
 6 
 
8^ A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 hunting was in itself a legitimate form of enterprise.'^ The pirate 
 might easily be regarded as a mere trader in human merchandise. 
 As such, he had perhaps been useful to Carthage ; ^ and, as long as 
 he abstained from attacking ports or nationalities under the pro- 
 tectorate of Rome, there was no reason why the capitalists in power 
 should frown on the trade by which they prospered. For the 
 pirates could probably bring better material to the slave market 
 than was usually won in war.^ A superior elegance and culture 
 must often have been found in the helpless victims on whom they 
 pounced ; beauty and education were qualities that had a high 
 marketable value, and by seizing on people of the better class they 
 were sure of one of two advantages — either of a ransom furnished 
 by the friends of the captives, or of a better price paid by the 
 dealer. There was scarcely a pretence that the traders were mere 
 intermediaries who bought in a cheap market and sold in a dear. 
 They were known to be raiders as well, and numbers of the captives 
 exhibited in the mart at Side in Pamphylia were known to have been 
 freemen up to the moment of the auction.* The facility for cap- 
 ture and the proximity of Delos, the greatest of the slave markets 
 which connected the East with the West, rendered the supply 
 enormous ; but it was equalled by the demand, and myriads of 
 captives are said to have been shipped to the island and to have 
 quitted it in a single day. The ease and rapidity of the business 
 transacted by the master of a slave-ship became a proverb ; * and 
 honest mercantile undertakings with their tardy gains must have 
 seemed contemptible in comparison with this facile source of 
 wealth. 
 
 An abundant supply and quick returns imply reasonable prices ; 
 and the cheapness of the labour supplied by the slave-trade, whether 
 as a consequence of war or piracy, was at once a necessary condition 
 of the vitality of the plantation system and a cause of the reckless- 
 
 ' C/. Arist. Pol. i. 8. 12 t) woKefuxii (picrei KTHiTixfi rus earat. ri y&p BripevTixii 
 /iepos auTrjs, p Sei xP?"'^'" ^P^^ '''^ ''^ ftijpio Kul ray avBpdiruv iaoi ire<pvii6rfs i.p\eiriat 
 fi^ dc\ova'iv^ us (piffeL SlKaioy tovtov ovra rhi/ irdKsfioy. 
 
 ^ Mahaffy {I.e.) thinks that the Syrians and Cilicians of the first slave war in 
 Sicily, whom he believes to have been transferred from Carthage, had been secured 
 by that state in a trade with the East — the trade which perhaps took the Southern 
 Mediterranean route from Malta past Crete and Cyprus. 
 
 ' Wallon Histoire de VEsclavage ii. p. 45. 
 
 * Strabo xiv. 3. 2 4v SlSri yovv ir((\ei t^s Uaii.^vXlas ra vavwiiyia (rvviaraTO TOis 
 Ki'Ai|iy, birh K'fipvKd t€ 4irii\ovv iKii Toiis aX6vTas iKfudfpous ifioXoyovvres. 
 
 ^ Strabo (xiv. 5. 2), after describing the slave market at Delos, continues Sffrf 
 Kal irapoifiiav yeveirSai SiA tovto ■ f/xTope, KaraTrX^vaov, i^ehov, vdvra ireTrparai. 
 
SLAVE LABOUR 83 
 
 ness and neglect with which the easily replaced instruments might 
 be used. Cato, a shrewd man of business, never cared to pay more 
 than fifteen hundred denarii for his slaves.^ This must have been 
 the price of the best type of labourer, of a man probably who was 
 gifted with intelligence as well as strength. Ordinary unskilled 
 labour must have fetched a far smaller sum ; for the prices which 
 are furnished by the comic poetry of the day — prices which are 
 as a rule conditioned by the value of personal services or qualities of 
 a paxticular kind, by the attractions of sex and the competition 
 for favours — do not on the average far exceed the limit fixed by 
 Cato.^ For common work newly imported slaves were actually pre- 
 ferred, and purchasers were shy of the veterator who had seen long 
 service.^ Employment in the fashionable circles of the town doubt- 
 less enhanced the value of a slave, when he was known to have been 
 in possession of some peculiar gift, whether it were for cookery, 
 medicine or literature ; but the labours of the country could easily 
 be drilled into the newest importation, and prices diminished instead 
 of rising with the advancing age and experience of the rustic 
 slave.* 
 
 The cheapened labour which was now spread over Italy pre- 
 sented as many varieties of moral as of physical type, and these 
 came to be well known to the prospective owner, not because he 
 aimed at being a moral influence, but because he objected to being 
 worried by the vagaries of an eccentric type. Sardinians were 
 always for sale, not because they were specially abundant, but 
 because they showed an indocility that rendered them a sorry 
 possession.* The passive Oriental, the Spaniard fierce and proud, 
 required different methods of management and inspired different 
 precautions ; yet experience soon proved that the hellenised sons 
 of the East had a better capacity for organising revolt than their 
 fellow-sufferers from the North and West, and much of the harsh- 
 ness of Roman slavei'y was prompted by the panic which is the 
 
 ' Plut. Cato Maj. 4. 
 
 *If we make the denarius a rough equivalent of the drachma, some of the 
 prices given in Plautus are as follows : — A child, 600 denarii, a nurse and two 
 female children, 1800, a young girl, 2000, another 3000. Here we seem to get the 
 average prices for valuable and refined domestics. Elsewhere special circumstances 
 might increase the value ; a female lyrist fetches 5000 denarii, a girl of remarkable 
 attractions 6000. See Wallon Hist, de VEsclavage ii. pp. 160 ff. 
 
 ^ Ter. Andria ii. 6. 26. 
 
 * It is probable, however, that in the case of superintendents {villici, villicae, 
 frocuratores) experience may have been an element in the prices which they fetched. 
 
 ^ Festus p. 322 Sardi venales, alius alio nequior. 
 
84 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 nemesis of the man who deals in human lives. But more of it was 
 due to the indifference which springs from familiarity, and from the 
 cold practical spirit in which the Roman always tended to play 
 with the pawns of his business game, even when they were freemen 
 and fellow-citizens. A man like Cato, who had sense and honesty 
 enough to look after his own business, elaborated a machine-like 
 system for governing his household, the aim of which was the maxi- 
 mum of profit with the minimum amount of humanity which is 
 consistent with the attainment of such an end. The element of 
 humanity is, however, accidental. There is no conscious appeal 
 to such a feeling. The slaves seem to be looked on rather as 
 automata who perform certain mental and physical processes 
 analogous to those of men. Cato's servants were never to enter 
 another house except at his bidding or at that of his wife, and were 
 to express utter ignorance of his domestic history to all inquirers ; 
 their life was to alternate between working and sleeping, and the 
 heavy sleeper was valued as presumably a peaceful character ; Httle 
 bickerings between the servants were to be encouraged, for unan- 
 imity was a matter for suspicion and fear ; the death sentence 
 pronounced on any one of them by the law was carried out in the 
 presence of the assembled household, so as to strike a wholesome 
 terror into the rest. If they wished to propagate their kind, they 
 must pay for the privilege, and a fixed sum was demanded from the 
 slave who desired to find a mate amongst his fellow-servants.^ The 
 rations were fixed and only raised at the people's festivals of the 
 Saturnalia and Compitalia ; ^ a sick slave was supposed to need less 
 than his usual share ^ — perhaps an excellent hygienic maxim, but 
 one scarcely adopted on purely hygienic grounds. Such a life was 
 an emphatic protest against the indulgence of the city, the free and 
 careless intercourse which often reversed the position of master and 
 slave and formed part of the stock-in-trade of the comedian. Yet, 
 even when the bond between the man of fashion and his artful ser- 
 vants had merely a life of pleasure and of mischief as its end, we are 
 at least lifted by such relations into a human sphere, and it is exceed- 
 ingly questionable whether the warped humanity of the city did 
 mark so low a level as the brutalised life of the estate over which 
 Cato's fostering genius was spread. If we develop Cato's methods 
 but a little, if we admit a little more rigour and a little less dis- 
 
 1 Plut. Cato Maj. 21. = Cato R. R. 56. 57. » Ibid. 2. 
 
SLAVE LABOUR 86 
 
 crimination, we get the dismal barrack-like system of the great 
 plantations — a barrack, or perhaps a prison, nominally ruled by a 
 governor who might live a hundred miles away, really under the 
 control of an anxious and terrified slave, who divided his fears be- 
 tween his master who wanted money and his servants who wanted 
 freedom. The villicus had been once the mere intendant of the 
 estate on which his master lived ; he was now sole manager of a 
 vast domain for his absent lord,^ sole keeper of the great ergastu- 
 Iwm which enclosed at nightfall the instruments of labour and 
 disgorged them at daybreak over the fields. The gloomy building 
 in which they were herded for rest and sleep showed but its roof 
 and a smaU portion of its walls above the earth ; most of it lay 
 beneath the ground, and the narrow windows were so high that 
 they could not be reached by the hands of the inmates.^ There 
 was no inspection by the government, scarcely any by the owners.^ 
 There was no one to tell the secrets of these dens, and if the un- 
 wary traveller were trapped and hidden behind their walls, all 
 traces of him might be for ever lost.* When the slaves were 
 tmned out into the fields, the safety of their drivers was secured 
 by the chains which bound their limbs, but which were so adjusted 
 as not to interfere with the movements necessary to their ■vt'ork.* 
 Some whose spirit had been broken might be left unbound, but 
 for the majority bonds were the only security against escape or 
 vengeance.® 
 
 Tbei?e was, however, one type of desperate character who was 
 permitted to roam at large. This was the guardian of the flocks, 
 who wandered unrestrained over the mountains during the summer 
 months and along the prairies in the winter season. These herds- 
 men formed small bands, ^t was reckoned that there should be 
 one for every eighty or hundred sheep and two for every troop of 
 
 ^At the close of this period a division took place between- the functions of 
 villicus and those of procurator. The former still controlled the economy of the 
 estate and administered its goods ; the latter was the business agent and entered 
 into legal relations with other parties. See Voigt in Iwan-Miiller's Handbuch iv. 2 
 p. 368. 
 
 2 Colum. i. 6. 
 
 'An inspection of all the ergastula of Italy was ordered by Augustus (Suet. 
 Aug. 32) and Tiberius (Suet. Tib. 8). Columella (i. 8) recommends inspection by 
 the master. 
 
 * Kidnapping became very frequent after the civil wars. It was to prevent this 
 evil that inspection was ordered by the Emperors (note 3). See Th^denat in 
 Daremberg-Saglio Diet, des Antiq. s.v. Ergastulum. 
 
 ^ Plaut. Most. i. I. 18 ; Florus iii. 19. 
 
 ' For the distinction between the vincti and soluti see Colum. i. 7. 
 
86 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 fifty horses.^ It was sometimes found convenient that they should 
 be accompanied by their women who prepai'ed their meals — women 
 of robust types like the Illyrian dames to whom child-birth was a 
 mere incident in the daily toils.^ Such a life of freedom had its 
 attractions for the slave, but it had its drawbacks too. The land- 
 owner who preferred pasturage to tillage, saved his capital, not only 
 by the small number of hands which the work demanded, but also 
 by the niggardly outlay which he expended on these errant serfs. 
 It was not needful to provide them with the necessaries of life 
 when they could take them for themselves. When Damophilus of 
 Enna was entreated by his slaves to give them something better 
 than the rags they wore, his answer was : " Do travellers then 
 travel naked through the land ? Have they nothing for the man 
 who wants a coat ? " ' Brigandage, in fact, was an established item 
 in the economic creed of the day. ^ 
 
 The desolation of Italy was becoming dangerous, and the master 
 of the lonely villa barred himself in at nights as though an enemy 
 were at his gates. On one occasion Scipio Africanus was disturbed 
 in his retreat at Liternum by a troop of bandits. He placed Vs 
 armed servants on the roof and made every preparation for repel- 
 ling the assault. But the visitors proved to be pacific. They were 
 the very elite of the fraternity of brigands and had merely come to 
 do honour to the great man. They sent back their troops, threw 
 down their arms, laid presents before his door and departed in 
 joyous mood.* The immunity of such bands proved that a slave 
 revolt might at any moment imperil every life and every dwelling 
 in some unprotected canton. It was indeed the epoch of peace, 
 when Roman and Phoenician armies no longer held the field in 
 Italy, that first suggested the hope of liberation to the slave. 
 ^Hannibal would have imperilled his character of a protector of 
 Italian towns had he encouraged a slave revolt, even if the Phoe- 
 nician had not shrunk from a precedent so fatal to his native land. 
 But one of the unexpected results of the Second Punic War was to 
 kindle a rising in the very heart of Latium, and it was the African 
 
 ^Varro R. R. ii. 2 10 The proportion is larger than would be demanded in 
 modern times, but Mahaffy {I.e.) remarks that we do not hear of the work of 
 guardianship being shared by trained dogs, and that the danger from wild beasts 
 and lawless classes was considerable. As regards the first point, however, we do 
 hear of packs of hounds which followed the Sicilian shepherds (Diod. xxxiv. 2), and 
 it is difficult to believe that these had not developed some kind of training. 
 
 '^Varro R. R. ii. 10. 7. ^Digd. xxxiv, 2. 38, 
 
 '' Val. Max. ii. lo. 2, 
 
198 B.C.] REVOLTS OF SLAVES IN ITALY 87 
 
 slave, not the African freeman, that stirred the last relics of the 
 war in Italy. |>^t Setia were guarded the noble Carthaginians who 
 were a pledge of the fidelity of their state. These hostages, the 
 sons of merchant princes, were allowed to retain the dignity of 
 their splendid homes, and a vast retinue of slaves from Africa 
 attended on their wants. The number of these was swelled by 
 captive members of the same nationalities whom the people of Setia 
 had acquired in the recent war.^ A spirit of camaraderie sprung 
 up amongst men who understood one another's language and had 
 acquired the spurious nationality that comes from servitude in the 
 same land. Their numbers were obvious, the paucity of the native 
 Setians was equally clear, and no military force was close at hand. 
 They planned to increase then- following by spreading disaffection 
 amongst the servile populations of the neighbouring country towns, 
 and emissaries were sent to Norba in the North and Circei in the 
 South. Their project was to wait for the rapidly approaching 
 games of the Setian folk and to rush on the unarmed populace as 
 they were gazing at the show ; when Setia had been taken, they 
 meant to seize on Norba and Circei. But there w gg trea son in 
 their ranks. The urban praetor was roused before dawn by two 
 slaves who poured the whole tale of the impending massacre into 
 his ear. After a hasty consultation of the senate he rushed to the 
 threatened district, gathering recruits as he swept with his legates 
 through the country side, binding them with the military oath, 
 bidding them arm and follow him with all speed. A hasty force 
 of about two thousand men was soon gathered ; none knew his 
 destination till he reached the gates of Setia. The heads of the 
 conspiracy were seized, and such of their followers as learnt the fact 
 fled incontinently from the town. From this point onward it was 
 only a matter of hunting down the refugees by patrols sent round 
 the country districts. Southern Latium was freed from its terror ; 
 but it was soon found that the evil had spread almost to the gates 
 of Rome. A rumour had spread that Praeneste was to be seized by 
 its slaves, and it was suflScient to stimulate a praetor to execute 
 nearly five hundred of the supposed delinquents.^ 
 
 Two years later a rising, which almost became a war, shook 
 
 'Livy (xxxii. 26) speaks of them as nationis eius. He has just mentioned the 
 slaves of the Carthaginian hostages. But it does not follow that either class was 
 composed of native Africans. They may have been imported Asiatics, as in Sicily. 
 
 ^Liv, xxxii, 26, 
 
88 A HISTORY OF ROME [B,C. 196 
 
 the great plantation lands of Etruria.^ Its suppression required a 
 legion and a pitched battle. The leaders were crucified ; others of 
 the slaves who had escaped the carnage were restored to their 
 masters. But these disturbances, that may have seemed niefg 
 sporadic relics of the havoc and exhaustion left by the Hannibalic 
 war, were only quelled for the moment. It was soon found that 
 the seeds of insecurity were deeply planted in the settlement that 
 was called a peace. During the year 185 the shepherds of Apulia 
 were found to have formed a great society of plunder, and robbery 
 with violence was of constant occurrence on the grazing lands and 
 public roads. The praetor who was in command at Tarentum 
 opened a commission which condemned seven thousand men. Many 
 were executed, although a large number of the criminals escaped to 
 other regions.^ 
 
 These movements in Italy were but the symptoms of a spirit 
 that was spreading over the Mediterranean lands. The rising of 
 the serfs only just preceded the great awakening of the masses of 
 the freemen.^ Both classes were ground down by capital ; both 
 would make an effort to shake the burden from their shoulders ; 
 and, as regards the methods of assertion, it is a matter of little 
 moment whether they took the form of a national rising against a 
 government or a protectorate, a sanguinary struggle in the Forum 
 against the dominance of a class, or an attack by chattels, not yet 
 brutalised by serfdom but full of the traditions and spirit of ft'eemen, 
 against the cruelty and indifference of their owners. In one sense 
 the servile movements were more universal, and perhaps better 
 organised, than those of the men to whom free birth gave a 
 nominal superiority. A sympathy for each other's sufferings per- 
 vaded the units of the class who were scattered in distant lands. 
 Sometimes it was a sympathy based on a sense of nationality, and the 
 Syrian and Cilician in Asia would feel joy and hope stirring in his 
 heart at the doings of his brethren who had been deported to the 
 far West. The series of organised revolts in the Roman provinces 
 and protectorate which commence shortly after the fall of Carthage 
 and close for the moment with the war of resistance to the Romans 
 in Asia, forms a single connected chain. Dangerous risings had to 
 be repressed at the Italian coast towns of Minturnae and Sinuessa ; 
 
 1 Liv. xxxiii. 36 Etruriam infestam prope conjuratio servorum fecit. 
 * Liv. xxxix. 29. 
 
 'Biicher Die Aufstiinde der unfreien Arbdter p. 34. Cf. Soltau in Kultur- 
 gesch. des klass. Altertums p. 326. 
 
Circa 140 B.C.] SLAVERY IN SICILY 89 
 
 at the former place four hundred and fifty slaves were crucified, at 
 the latter four thousand were crushed by a military force ; the 
 mines of Athens, the slave market of Delos, witnessed similar out- 
 breaks,^ and we shall find a like wave of discontent spreading over 
 the serf populations of the countries of the Mediterranean just 
 before the second great outbreak in Sicily which darkens the close 
 of the second century. The evil fate which made this island the 
 theatre of the two greatest of the servile wars is explicable on many 
 grounds. The opportunity offered by the sense of superiority in 
 numbers was far ampler here than in any area of Italy of equal 
 size. For Sicily was a wheat-growing country, and the cultivated 
 plains demanded a mass of labour which was not needed in more 
 mountainous or less fertile lands, where pasturage yielded a surer 
 return than the tilling of the soil. The pasture lands of Sicily were 
 indeed large, but they had not yet dwarfed the agriculture of the 
 island. The labour of the fields was in the hands of a vast horde 
 of Asiatics, large numbers of whom may conceivably have been 
 shipped from Carthage across the narrow sea, when that great 
 centre of the plantation system had been laid low and the fair 
 estates of the Punic nobles had been seized and broken up by their 
 conquerors.^ In the history of the great Sicilian outbreaks Syrians 
 and Cilicians meet us at every turn. These Asiatic slaves had 
 different nationalities and they or their fathers had been citizens of 
 widely separated towns. But there were bonds other than a com- 
 mon suffering which produced a keen sense of national union and a 
 consequent feeling of ideal patriotism in the hearts of all. They 
 were the products of the common Hellenism of the East ; they or 
 their fathers could make a claim to have been subjects of the great 
 Seleucid monarchy ; many, perhaps most of them, could assert 
 freedom by right of birth and acknowledged slavery only as a con- 
 sequence of the accidents of war or piracy. The mysticism of the 
 Oriental, the political ideal of the Hellene, were interwoven in their 
 moral nature — a nature perhaps twisted by the brutalism of slavery 
 to superstition in the one direction, to licence in the other, but 
 none the less capable of great conceptions and valiant deeds. The 
 moment for both would come when the prophet had appeared, and 
 the prophet would surely show himself when the cup of suffering 
 had overflowed.^ 
 
 1 Oros. V. g Diodor. xxxiv. 2. ig. ' Mahaffy I.e. 
 
 ' Cf. Bucher op. cit. p. 79. 
 
90 A HISTORY OF ROME [Circa B.C. 140 
 
 The masters who worked this human mechanism were driving it 
 at a pace which must have seemed dangerous to any human being 
 less greedy, vain and confident than themselves. The wealth of 
 these potentates was colossal, but it was equalled by their social 
 rivalry and consequent need of money. A contest in elegance was 
 being fought between the Siceliot and the Italian.^ The latter was 
 the glass of fashion, and the former attempted to rival, first his habits 
 of domestic life and, as a consequence, the economic methods which 
 rendered these habits possible. Here too, as in Italy, whole gangs 
 of slaves were purchased like cattle or sheep ; some were weighed 
 down with fetters, others ground into subordination by the cruel 
 severity of their tasks. All without exception were branded, and 
 men who had been free citizens in their native towns, felt the touch 
 of the burning iron and carried the stigma of slavery to their graves." 
 Food was doled out in miserable quantities,^ for the shattered in- 
 strument could so easily be replaced. On the fields one could see 
 little but abject helplessness, a misery that weakened while it 
 tortured the soul. But in some parts of Sicily bodily want was 
 combined with a wild daring that was fostered by the reckless 
 owners, whose greed had overcome all sense of their own security 
 or that of their fellow-citizens. The treatment of pastoral slaves 
 which had been adopted by the Roman graziers was imitated faith- 
 fully by the Italians and Siceliots of the island. These slaves were 
 turned loose with their flocks to find their food and clothing where 
 and how they could. The youngest and stoutest were chosen for 
 this hard, wild life : and their physical vigour was still further in- 
 creased by their exposure to every kind of weather, by their seldom 
 finding or needing the shelter of a roof, and by the milk and meat 
 which formed their staple food. A band of these men presented a 
 terrifying aspect, suggesting a scattered invasion of some warlike 
 barbarian tribe. Their bodies were clad in the skins of wolves and 
 boars; slung at their sides or poised in their hands were clubs, 
 lances and long shepherds' staves. Each squadron was followed by 
 a pack of large and powerful hounds. Strength, leisure, need, all 
 suggested brigandage as an integral part of their profession. At 
 first they murdered the wayfarer who went alone or with but one 
 companion. Then their courage rose and they concerted nightly 
 
 ^ Diod. xxxiv. 2. 27. For the large number of Roman proprietors in Sicily see 
 Florus ii. 7 (iii. ig) 3 — (Sicilia) terra frugum ferax et quodam modo suburbana 
 provincia latifundis civium Romanorum tenebatur. 
 
 ' Diod. xxxiv. 2. 32. 36. ^Diod, l.c, 
 
Circa 140 B.C.] EUNUS ^ '<m^ 
 
 attacks on the villas of the weaker residents. These villas they 
 stormed and plundered, slaying any one who attempted to bar their 
 way. As their impunity increased, Sicily became impracticable to 
 travellers by night, and residence in the country districts became a 
 tempting of providence. There was violence, brigandage or murder 
 on every hand. The governors of Sicily occasionally interposed, but 
 they were almost powerless to check the mischief. The influence of 
 the slave-owners was such that it was dangerous to inflict an ade- 
 quate punishment.^ 
 
 The proceedings of these militant shepherds must have opened 
 the eyes of the mass of the slaves to the possibilities of the position. 
 Secret meetings began to be held at which the word " revolt " was 
 breathed. An occasion, a leader, a divine sanction were for the 
 moment lacking. The first requisite would follow the other two, 
 and these were soon found combined in the person of Eunus. This 
 man was a Syrian by birth, a native of Apamea, and he served 
 Antigenes of Enna. He was more than a believer in the power of 
 the gods to seize on men and make them the channel of their will ; 
 he was a living witness to it in his own person. At first he saw 
 shadows of superhuman form and heard their voices in his dreams. 
 Then there were moments when he would be seized with a trance ; 
 he was wrapt in contemplation of some divine being. Then the 
 words of prophecy would come ; they were not his utterance but 
 the bidding of the great Syrian goddess. Sometimes the words 
 were preceded by a strange manifestation of supernatural power ; 
 smoke, sparks or flame would issue from his open mouth.^ The 
 clairvoyance may have been a genuine mental experience, the thau- 
 maturgy the type of fiction which the best of media may be 
 tempted to employ ; but both won belief from his fellows, eager 
 for any light in the darkness, and a laughing acceptance from his 
 master, glad of a novelty that might amuse his leisure. As a 
 matter of fact, Eunus's predictions sometimes came true. People 
 
 ' Diod. xxxiv. 2. 31. This may have been true of the time of which we are speak- 
 ing ; for the influence of the Roman residents in Sicily on the administration of the 
 island must always have been great. But Diodorus assigns an incorrect reason vi^hen 
 he states that the Roman knights of Sicily were judges of the governors of the pro- 
 vinces. This is true only of the period preceding the second servile war. 
 
 ^ Historians profess to tell the mechanism by which this device was secured. 
 A spark of fire was placed with inflammable material in a hollow nut or some 
 similar small object, which was perforated. The receptacle was placed in the 
 mouth, and judicious breathing did the rest. See Diodorus xxxiv. z. 7 ; Florus ii. 7 
 (iii. 19). 
 
92 A HISTORY OF ROME [Circa B.C. 140 
 
 forgot (as people will) the instances of their falsification, but 
 applauded them heartily when they were fulfilled. Eunus was a 
 good enough medium to figure at a fashionable stance. His latest 
 profession was the promise of a kingdom to himself; it was the 
 Syrian goddess who had held out the golden prospect. The pro- 
 mise he declared boldly to his master, knowing perhaps the spirit 
 in which the message would be received. Antigenes was delighted 
 with his prophet king. He showed him at his own table, and took 
 him to the banquets given by his friends. There Eunus would be 
 questioned about his kingdom, and each of the guests would be- 
 speak his patronage and clemency. His answers as to his future 
 conduct were given without reserve. He promised a policy of 
 mercy, and the quaint earnestness of the imposture would dissolve 
 the company in laughter. Portions of food were handed him from 
 the board, and the donors would ask that he should remember their 
 kindness when he came into his kingdom. These were requests 
 which Eunus did not forget. 
 
 With such an influence in its centre, Enna seemed destined to be 
 the spring of the revolt. But there was another reason which ren- 
 dered it a likely theatre for a deed of daring. The broad plateau 
 on which the town was set was thronged with shepherds in the winter 
 season,^ and some of the great graziers of Enna owned herds of 
 these bold and lawless men. Conspicuous amongst these graziers 
 for his wealth, his luxury and his cruelty was one Damophilus, the 
 man who had formulated the theory that the shepherd slave should 
 keep himself by robbing others.^ Damophilus was a Siceliot, but 
 none of the Roman magnates of the island could have shown a 
 grander state than that which he maintained. His finely bred 
 horses, his four-wheeled carriages, his bodyguard of slaves, his 
 beautiful boys, his crowd of parasites, were known all over the broad 
 acres and huge pasture lands which he controlled. His town house 
 and villas displayed chased silverwork, rich carpets of purple dye 
 and a table of royal elegance. He surpassed Roman luxury in the 
 lavishness of his expense, Roman pride in his sense of complete in- 
 dependence of circumstance, and Roman niggardliness and cruelty in 
 his treatment of his slaves. Satiety had begotten a chronic callous- 
 ness and even savagery that showed itself, not merely in the now 
 familiar use of the ergastulum and the brand, but in arbitrary and 
 
 ' Nitzsch Die Oracchen p. 228. ' P, 86, 
 
Circa 140 B.C.] REVOLT AT ENNA 98 
 
 cruel punishments which were part of the programme of almost 
 every day. His wife Megallis, hardened by the same influences, 
 was the torment of her maidens and of such domestics as were 
 more immediately under her control. The servants of this house- 
 hold had one conviction in common — that nothing worse than their 
 present evils could possibly be their lot. 
 
 This is the conviction that inspires acts of frenzy; but the 
 madness of these slaves was of the orderly, systematic and therefore 
 dangerous type. They would not act without a divine sanction to 
 their whispered plans. Some of them approached Eunus and asked 
 him if their enterprise was permitted by the gods. The prophet 
 first produced the usual manifestations which attested his inspira- 
 tion and then replied that the gods assented, if the plan were 
 taken in hand forthwith. Enna was the destined place ; it was 
 the natural stronghold of the whole island ; it was foredoomed to 
 be the capital of the new race that would rule over Sicily. ^ 
 Heartened by the belief that Heaven was aiding their efforts, 
 the leaders then set to work. They secretly released such of 
 Damophilus's household as were in bonds ; they gathered others 
 together, and soon a band to the number of about four hundred 
 were mustered in a field in the neighbourhood of Enna. There in 
 the early hours of the night they offered a sacrifice and swore their 
 solemn compact. They had gathered everything which could serve 
 as a weapon, and when midnight was approaching they were ready 
 for the first attempt. They marched swiftly to the sleeping town 
 and broke its stillness with their cries of exhortation. Eunus was 
 at their head, fire streaming from his mouth against the darkness 
 of the night. The streets and houses were immediately the scene of 
 a pitiless massacre. The maddened slaves did not even spare the 
 children at the breast; they dragged them from their mothers' 
 arms and dashed them upon the ground. The women were the 
 victims of unspeakable insult and outrage.^ Every slave had his 
 own wrongs to avenge, for the originjJ assailants had now been 
 joined by a large number of the domestics of the town. Each of 
 these wreaked his own peculiar vengeance and then turned to take 
 his share in the general massacre. 
 
 Meanwhile Eunus and his immediate following had learnt news 
 
 ^ Diod. xxxiv. 2. 24 iwb yiip rris veitpwuivris airois KiKvpmaBai r^v varpiSa tV 
 Eyvav, otffav aKp6Tro\u' !(A.7js Trjs rliaov. 
 
 " Ibid. 2. 12 oiS' iariv elirely . . . Hera iyi$pi(6v re nal ivnafXyaivov. 
 
94 A HISTORY OF ROME [Circa B.C. 140 
 
 of the arch-enemy Damophilus. He was known to be staying in 
 his pleasance near to the city. Thence he and his wife were fetched 
 with every mark of ignominy, and the unhappy pair were dragged 
 into the town with their hands bound behind their backs. The 
 masters of the city now mustered in the theatre for an act of 
 justice ; but Damophilus did not lose his wits even when he scanned 
 that sea of hostile faces and accusing eyes. He attempted a de- 
 fence and was listened to in silence — nay, with approval, for many 
 of his auditors were visibly stirred by his words. But some bolder 
 spirits were tired of the show or fearful of its issue. Hermeias and 
 Zeuxis, two of his bitterest enemies, shouted out that he was an 
 impostor ^ and rushed upon him. One of the two thrust a sword 
 through his side, the other smote his head oiF with an axe. It was 
 then the women's turn. Megallis's female slaves were given the 
 power to treat her as they would. They first tortured her, then 
 led her up to a high place and dashed her to the ground. Eunus 
 avenged his private wrongs by the death of his own masters, 
 Antigenes and Python. The scene in the theatre had perhaps 
 revealed more than the desire for a systematised revenge. It may 
 have shown that there was some sense of justice, of order in the 
 savage multitude. And indeed vengeance was not wholly indis- 
 criminate. Eunus concealed and sent secretly away the men who 
 had given him meat from their tables.^ Even the whole house of 
 Damophilus did not perish. There was a daughter, a strange pro- 
 duct of such a home, a maiden with a pure simplicity of character 
 and a heart that melted at the sight of pain. She had been used 
 to soothe the anguish of those who had been scourged by her 
 parents and to relieve the necessities of such as were put in bonds. 
 Hence the abounding love felt for her by the slaves, the pity that 
 thrilled them when her home was doomed. An escort was selected 
 to convey her in safety to some relatives at Catana. Its most de- 
 voted member was Hermeias, ^ perhaps the very man whose hands 
 were stained by her father's blood. 
 
 The next step in the progress of the revolt was to form a 
 political and military organisation that might command the respect 
 of the countless slaves who were soon to break their bonds in the 
 other districts of Sicily. Eunus was elected king. His name be- 
 came Antiochus, his subjects were "Syrians".* It was not the first 
 
 ^ irXdvov T6 im^RiXovv (Diod. xxxiv. 2. 14). ^ Diodor. xxxiv. 2. 41. 
 
 ^Ibid. 2. 39. *Ibid. 2. 24. 
 
Circa 140 B.C.] EUNUS BECOMES KING 95 
 
 time that a slave had assumed the diadem ; for was it not being 
 worn for the moment by Diodotus surnamed Tryphon, the guardian 
 and reputed murderer of Alexander of Syria ? ' The elevation of 
 Eunus to the throne was due to no belief in his courage or his general- 
 ship. But he was the prophet of the movement, the cause of its 
 inception, and his very name was considered to be of good omen 
 for the harmony of his subjects. When he had bound the diadem 
 on his brow and adopted regal state, he elevated the woman who 
 had been his companion (a Syrian and an Apamean like himself) 
 to the rank of queen. He formed a council of such of his followers 
 as were thought to possess wits above the average, and he set him- 
 self to make Enna the adequate centre of a lengthy war. He put 
 to death all his captives in Enna who had no skill in fashioning 
 arms ; the residue he put in bonds and set to the task of forging 
 weapons. 
 
 Eunus was no warrior, but he had the regal gift of recognising 
 merit. The soul of the military movement which spread from 
 Enna was Achaeus,^ a man pre-eminent both in counsel and in 
 action,^ one who did not permit his reason to be mastered by 
 passion and whose anger was chiefly kindled by the foolish atrocities 
 committed by some of his followers.*. Under such a leader the 
 cause rapidly advanced. The original four hundred had swelled 
 in three days to six thousand ; it soon became ten thousand. As 
 Achaeus advanced, the ergastula were broken open and each of 
 these prison-houses furnished a new multitude of recruits.^ Soon 
 a vast addition to the available forces was effected by a movement 
 in another part of the island. In the territory of Agrigentum 
 one Cleon a Cilician suddenly arose as a leader of his fellows. He 
 was sprung from the regions about Mount Taurus and had been 
 habituated from his youth to a life of brigandage. In Sicily he 
 was supposed to be a herdsman of horses. He was also a high- 
 wayman who commanded the roads and was believed to have com- 
 mitted murders of varied types. When he heard of the success 
 of Eunus, he deemed that the moment had come for raising a 
 revolt on his own account. He gathered a band of followers, over- 
 
 ^ Liv. Ep. Iv. ; App. Syr. 68. Cf. Nitzsch Die Gracchen p. 288. 
 
 2 Diodorus describes him as an Achaean. Mahafiy (l.c.) suspects that he came 
 from Eastern Asia Minor or Syria, where Achaeus occurs as a royal name. But 
 the name also occurs in old Greece. One may instance the tragic poet of Eretria. 
 
 ^ Kol fiovXy Kal x^'p' Siaipipav (Diod. xxxiv. 2. i6). 
 
 *Ibid. 2. 42. ^ Floras ii. 7 (iii. 19). 6. 
 
96 A HISTORY OF ROME [Circa B.C. 140 
 
 whelmed the city of Agrigentum and ravaged the surrounding 
 territory.^ 
 
 The terrified Siceliots, and perhaps some of the slaves them- 
 selves, believed that this dual movement might ruin the servile 
 cause. There were daily expectations that the armies of Eunus and 
 Cleon would meet in conflict. But such hopes or fears were dis- 
 appointed. Cleon put himself absolutely under the authority of 
 Eunus and performed the functions of a general to a king. The 
 junction of the forces occurred about thirty days after the outbreak 
 at Enna, and the Cilician brought five thousand men to the royal 
 standard. The full complement of the slaves when first they joined 
 battle with the Roman power amounted to twenty thousand men ; 
 before the close of the war their army numbered over sixty thousand.^ 
 
 The Roman government exhibited its usual slowness in realising 
 the gravity of the situation ; yet it may be excused for believing 
 that it had only to deal with local tumults such as those which 
 had been so easily suppressed in Italy. The force of eight thousand 
 men which it put into the field under the praetor Lucius Hypsaeus 
 may have seemed more than sufficient. Yet it was routed by the 
 insurgent army, now numbering twenty thousand men, and in the 
 skirmishes which followed the balance of success inclined to the 
 rebels. The immediate progress of the struggle cannot be traced 
 in any detail, but there is a general record of the storming of 
 Roman camps and the flight of Roman generals.' The theatre 
 of the war was certainly extending at an alarming rate. The 
 rebels had first controlled the centre and some part of the South 
 Western portion of the island, the region between Enna and 
 Agrigentum ; but now they had pushed their conquests up to the 
 East, had reached the coast and had gained possession of Catana and 
 Tauromenium.* The devastation of the conquered districts is said 
 to have been more terrible than that which followed on the Punic 
 War.^ But for this the slaves were not wholly, perhaps not mainly, 
 responsible. The rebel armies, looking to a settlement in the future 
 
 1 Diod. xxxiv. 2. 43. ^ Ibid. 2. 18 ; Florus I.e. 
 
 ' Florus ii. 7 (iii. ig). 7 Quin illud quoque ultimum dedecus belli, capta sunt 
 castra praetorum — nee nominare ipsos pudebit — castra Manli Lentuli, Pisonis 
 Hypsaei. Itaque qui per fugitivarios abstrahi debuissent praetorios duces profugos 
 praelio ipsi sequebantur. P. Popillius Laenas, the consul of 132 B.C., was praetor 
 in Sicily either immediately before, or during the revolt (C. I. L. i. n. 551, 1. 9). 
 
 * Strabo vi. 2. 6. For the question whether they held Messana see p. 98. 
 
 " Florus ii. 7 (iii. 19). 2 Quis crederet Siciliam multo cruentius servili quam 
 Punico bello esse vastatam ? 
 
134,-133 B.C.] END OF THE SERVILE WAR 97 
 
 when they should enjoy the fruit of their victories, left the villas 
 standing, their furniture and stores uninjured, and did no harm 
 to the implements of husbandry. It was the free peasantry of 
 Sicily that now showed a savage resentment at the inequality of 
 fortune and of life which severed them from the great landholders. 
 Under pretext of the servile war ^ they sallied out, and not only 
 plundered the goods of the conquered, but even set fire to their 
 villas. 
 
 The words of Eunus when, at the beginning of the revolt, he 
 claimed Enna as the metropolis of the new nation,^ and the conduct 
 of his followers in sparing the grandeur and comfort which had 
 fallen into their hands, are sufficient proofs that the revolted slaves, 
 in spite of their possession of the seaports of Catana and Tauro- 
 menium, had no intention of escaping from Sicily. Perhaps even 
 if they had willed it, such a course might have been impossible. 
 They had no fleet of their own ; the Cilician pirates off the coast 
 might have refused to accept such dangerous passengers and to 
 imperil their reputation as honest members of the slave trade. 
 And, if the fugitives crossed the sea, what homes had they to 
 which they could return ? To their own cities they were dead, 
 and the long arm of Rome stretched over her protectorates in the 
 East.' 
 
 It was therefore with a power which intended a permanent 
 settlement in Sicily, that the Roman government had to cope. Its 
 sense of the gravity of the situation was seen in the despatch of 
 consular armies. The first under Caius Fulvius Flaccus seems to 
 have effected little.* The second under Lucius Calpumius Piso, the 
 consul of the following year, laid siege to Enna,* and captured a 
 stronghold of the rebels. Eight thousand of the slaves were slain 
 
 ' hrX Tp rpoipiiffei rav Spairerav (Diodor. xxxiv. 2. 48). Wallon (Hist, de 
 VEsclavage ii. p. 307) takes these words to mean that the peasantry professed to 
 be marching against the slaves. ^ P. 93- 
 
 ^Mahaffy (I.e.) has raised and discussed this question. His conclusions are 
 (i) that the pirates may have been influenced by a sense of business honour to the 
 effect that the man-stealer should abide by his bargain, (ii) tha.t these pirates may 
 have received some large bribe, direct or indirect, from Rome, (iii) that the natural 
 enmity between the slaves and the pirates may have hindered an agreement for 
 transport, (iv) that the Cilician slaves, accustomed to permanent robber-bands, may 
 have not held it impossible that Rome would acquiesce in such a creation in 
 Sicily, (v) that the Syrian towns would not have troubled about the restoration of 
 such of their members as had become slaves, even had they not feared to offend 
 Rome. He remarks that the return of even &ee exiles to a Hellenistic city was a 
 cause of great disturbance. 
 
 *Liv. Ef. Ivi. ; Oros. v. 9. ^C. I. L. i. nn. 642, 643. 
 
 7 
 
98 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 132 
 
 by the sword, all who could be seized were nailed to the cross.^ The 
 crowning victories, and the nominal pacification of the island, re- 
 mained for Piso's successor, Publius Rupilius. He drove the rebels 
 into Tauromenium and sat down before the city until they were re- 
 duced to unspeakable straits by famine. The town was at length 
 yielded through treachery ; Sarapion a Syrian betrayed the acropolis, 
 and the Roman commander found a multitude of starving men at 
 his mercy. He was pitiless in his use of victory. The captives 
 were first tortured, then taken up to a high place and dashed 
 downwards to the ground. The consul then moved on Enna. The 
 rebels defended their last stronghold with the utmost courage and 
 persistence. Achaeus seems to have already fallen, but the brave 
 Cihcian leaders still held out with all the native valour of their race. 
 Cleon made a sortie from the town and fought heroically until he 
 fell covered with wounds. Cleon's brother Coma^ was captured 
 during the siege and brought before Rupilius, who questioned him 
 about the strength and the plans of the remaining fugitives. He 
 asked for a moment to collect his thoughts, covered his head 
 with his cloak, and died of suffocation, in the hands of his guard and 
 in sight of the general, before a compromising word had passed 
 his lips. King Eunus was not made of such stem stuff. When 
 Enna, impregnable in its natural strength, had been taken by 
 treachery, he fled with his bodyguard of a thousand men to still 
 more precipitous regions. His companions, knowing that it was 
 impossible to escape their fate (for Rupilius was already moving) 
 fell on each others swords. But Eunus could not face this death. 
 He took refuge in a cave, from which he was dragged with the last 
 poor relics of his splendid court — his cook, his baker, his bath 
 attendant and his buffoon. The Romans for some reason spared his 
 life, or at least did not doom him to immediate death. He was kept 
 a prisoner at Morgantia, where he died shortly afterwards of disease. 
 It is said that by the date of the fall of Enna more than twenty 
 thousand slaves had perished.^ Even without this slaughter, the 
 capture of their seaport and their armoury would have been suffi- 
 
 ^ Oros. V. y. This Mamertium oppidum of Orosius has often been interpreted 
 as Messana (Mamertinorum oppidum, Biicher, p. 68) ; for, although the slaves of 
 this town had not revolted (Oros. v. 6. 4), it might have been captured by the rebels. 
 Schafer, however (Jahrb. f. Class. Pkilol. 1873 p. 71) explains Mamertium as 
 Morgantia {Murgentinum oppidum). 
 
 ^Val. Max. ix. 12 ext. i. Diodorus (xxxiv. 2. 20) calls him Comanus and speaks 
 of his being captured during the siege of Tauromenium. 
 
 ^ Oros. V. g. 
 
131 B.C.] THE PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED 99 
 
 cient to break the back of the revolt.^ It only remained to scour 
 the country with picked bands of soldiers for organised resistance 
 to be shattered, and even for the curse of brigandage to be rooted 
 out for a while. Death was no longer meted out indiscriminately 
 to the rebels. Such of the slave-owners as survived would probably 
 have protested against wholesale crucifixion, and the destruction of 
 all of the fugitives would have impaired the resources of Sicily. 
 Thus many were spared the cross and restored to their bonds.'' 
 The extent to which reorganisation was needed before the province 
 could resume its normal life, is shown by the fact that the senate 
 thought it worth while to give Sicily a new provincial charter. 
 Ten commissioners were sent to assist Rupilius in the work, which 
 henceforth bore the proconsul's name.^ The work, as we know it, was 
 of a conservative character ; but it is possible that no complete 
 charter had ever existed before, and the war may have revealed 
 defects in the arrangements of Sicily that had heretofore been un- 
 suspected. 
 
 A climax of the type of the servile war in Sicily was perhaps 
 needed to bring the social problem home to thinking men in Rome. 
 Not that it by any means sufficed for all who pondered on the public 
 welfare or laboured at the business of the State. The men who 
 measured happiness by wealth and empire might still have retained 
 their unshaken confidence in the Fortune of Rome. Had a Capys 
 of this class arisen, he might have given a thrilling picture of the 
 immediate future of his city, dark but grimly national in its emer- 
 gence from trial to triumph. He might have seen her conquering 
 arms expanding to the Euphrates and the Rhine, and undreamed 
 sources of wealth pouring their streams into the treasury or the 
 coffers of the great. If there was blood in the picture, when had it 
 been absent from the annals of Rome ? Even civil strife and a new 
 Italian war might be a hard but a necessary price to pay for a strong 
 government and a grand mission. If an antiquated constitution 
 disappeared in the course of this glorious expansion, where was the 
 loss.? 
 
 But there were men in Rome who measured human life by other 
 canons : who believed that the State existed for the individual at 
 least as much as the individual for the State : who, even when they 
 were imperialists, saw with terror the rotten foundations on which 
 
 1 Wallon Hist, de VEsclavage ii. p. 308.-^ ^ Florus ii. 7 (iii. 19). 8. 
 ' For the lex Rupilia see Cic. in Verr. ii. 13. 32 ; 15. 37 ; 16. 39 ; 24. 59. 
 
100 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 the empire rested, and with indignation the miserable returns that 
 had been made to the men who had bought it with their blood. To 
 them the brilliant present and the glorious future were veiled by a 
 screen that showed the ghastly spectres of commercial imperialism. 
 It showed luxury running riot amongst a nobility already impov- 
 erished and ever more thievishly inclined, a colossal capitalism 
 clutching at the land and stretching out its tentacles for every 
 source of profitable trade, the middle class fleeing from the country 
 districts and ousted from their living in the towns, and the fair 
 island that was almost a part of their Italian home, its garden and 
 its granary, in the throes of a great slave war. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 A CAUSE never lacks a champion, nor a great cause one whom 
 it may render great. Failure is in itself no sign of lack of 
 spirit and ability, and when a vast reform is the product of 
 a mean personality, the individual becomes glorified by identification 
 with his work. From this point of view it mattered little who under- 
 took the task of the economic regeneration of the Roman world. Any 
 senator of respectable antecedents and moderate ability, who had a 
 stable following amongst the ruling classes, might have succeeded 
 where Tiberius Gracchus failed ; it was a task in which authority was 
 of more importance than ability, and the sense that the more numer- 
 ous or powerful elements of society were united in the demand for 
 reform, of more value than individual genius or honesty of purpose. 
 This was the very circumstance that foreshadowed failure, for the 
 men of wide connections and established fame had shrunk from an 
 enterprise with which they sympathised in various degrees. In the 
 proximate history of the Republic there had been three men who 
 showed an unwavering belief in the Italian farmer and the blessings 
 of agi-iculture. These were M. Porcius Cato, P. Cornelius Scipio 
 and Ti. Sempronius Gracchus. But the influence of Cato's house 
 had become extinct with its first founder. The elder son, an ami- 
 able man and an accomplished j urist, had not out-lived his father ; 
 the second still survived, but seems to have inherited little of the 
 fighting qualities of the terrible censor. The traditions of a Roman 
 house needed to be sustained by the efforts of its existing represen- 
 tative, and the " newness " of the Porcii might have necessitated 
 generations of vigorous leaders to make them a power in the land. 
 Scipionic traditions were now represented by Aemilianus, and the 
 glow of the luminary was reflected in paler lights, who received 
 their lustre from moving in that charmed orbit. One of these, the 
 indefatigable henchman Laelius,'had risen to the rank of consul, and 
 
 (101) 
 
102 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 stimulated by the vigorous theorisings of his hellenised environment, 
 he contemplated for a moment the formation of a plan which should 
 deal with some of the worst evils of the agrarian question. But he 
 looked at the problem only to start back in affright. The strength 
 and truculency of the vested interests with which he would haVe to 
 deal were too much for a man whose nerve was weakened by philo- 
 sophy and experience, and Laehus by his retreat justified, if he did 
 not gain, the soubriquet which proclaimed his " sapience "} But why 
 was Scipio himself idle ? The answer is to be found both in his tem- 
 perament and in his circumstances. With all his dash and energy, 
 he was something of a healthy hedonist. As the chase had delighted 
 him in his youth, so did war in his manhood. While hating its 
 cruelties, he gloried in its excitement, and the discipline of the 
 camp was more to his mind than the turbulence of an assembly. 
 His mind, too, belonged to that class which finds it almost impossible 
 to emancipate itself from traditional politics. His vast knowledge 
 of the history of other civilisations may have taught him, as it 
 taught Polybius, that Rome was successful because she was unique.'' 
 Here there was to be no break with the past, no legislator posing 
 as a demi-god, no obedience to the cries of the masses who, if they 
 once got loose, might turn and rend the enlightened few, and re- 
 produce on Italian soil the shocking scenes of Greek socialistic 
 enterprise. As things were, to be a reformer was to be a partisan, 
 and Scipio loved the prospect of his probable supporters as little eis 
 that of his probable opponents. The fact of the Empire, too, 
 must have weighed heavily with a man who was no blind imperialist. 
 Even though economic reform might create an added efliciency in 
 the army, Scipio must have known, as Polybius certainly knew, that 
 soldiers are but pawns in the great game, and that the controlling 
 forces were the wisdom of the conservative senator, the ambition of 
 the wealthy noble, and the capital of the enterprising knight. The 
 wisdom of disturbing their influence, and awakening their resent- 
 ment, could scarcely appeal to a mind so perfectly balanced and 
 practical as Scipio's. Circumstances, too, must have had their share 
 in determining his quiescence. The Scipios had been a power in 
 Rome in spite of the nobility. They were used because they were 
 
 '■ Plut. Ti. Gracch. 8. Plutarch speaks of an " attempt" {iirfx^ifniaf /ih olv tJ 
 Siopeiiaei) ; but the eifort perhaps went no further than the testing of opinion to 
 discover the probabihty of support. The enterprise may have belonged to the 
 praetorship of Laehus (145 e.g.). 
 
 "Polyb. vi. II. 
 
TIBERIUS GRACCHUS 103 
 
 needed, not because they were loved, and the necessary man was 
 never in much favour with the senate. Although there was no tie 
 of blood between Aemilianus and the elder Scipio, they were much 
 alike both in fortune and in temperament. They had both been 
 called upon to save military situations that were thought desperate ; 
 their reputation had been made by successful war; and though 
 neither was a mere soldier, they lacked the taste and the patience 
 for the complicated political game, which alone made a man a 
 power amidst the noble circles and their immediate dependants at 
 Rome. 
 
 But the last generation had seen in Tiberius Gracchus a man 
 whose political influence had been vast, a noble with but scant 
 respect for the indefeasible rights of the nobility and as stern as 
 Cato in his animadversions on the vices of his order, a man whose 
 greatest successes abroad had been those of diplomacy rather than 
 of war, one who had established firm connections and a living 
 memory of himself both in West and East, whose name was known 
 and loved in Spain, Sardinia, Asia and Egypt. It would have 
 been too much to hope that this honest old aristocrat would at- 
 tempt to grapple with the evils which had first become manifest 
 during his own long lifetime ; but it was not unnatural that people 
 should look to a son of his for succour, especially as this son re- 
 presented the blood of the Scipios as well as of the Gracchi. The 
 marriage of the elderly Gracchus with the young Cornelia had 
 marked the closing of the feud, personal rather than political, 
 which had long separated him from the elder Scipio : and a further 
 link between the two families was subsequently forged by the 
 marriage of Sempronia, a daughter of Cornelia, to Scipio Aemilianus. 
 The young Tiberius Gracchus may have been born during one of 
 his father's frequent absences on the service of the State.^ Certainly 
 the elder Gracchus could have seen little of his son during the years 
 of his infancy. But the closing years of the old man's life seem to 
 have been spent uninterruptedly in Italy, and Tiberius must have 
 been profoundly influenced by the genial and stately presence that 
 Rome loved and feared. But he was little more than a boy when 
 his father died, and the early influences that moulded his future 
 career seem to have been due mainly to his mother. Cornelia 
 would have been the typical Roman matron, had she lived a hundred 
 
 ^ Nitzsch Die Gracchen p. 203. 
 
104 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 years earlier ; she would then have trained sons for the battlefield, 
 not for the Forum. As it was, the softening influences of Greek 
 culture had tempered without impairing her strength of character, 
 had substituted rational for purely supernatural sanctions, and a 
 wide political outlook for a rude sense of civic duty. Herself the 
 product of an education such as ancient civilisations rarely bestowed 
 upon their women, she wrote and spoke with a purity and grace 
 which led to the belief that her sons had learnt from her lips and 
 from her pen their first lessons in that eloquence which swayed the 
 masses and altered the fortunes of Rome.^ But her gifts had not 
 impaired her tenderness. Her sons were her "Jewels," and the 
 successive loss of nine of the children which she had borne to 
 Gracchus must have made the three that remained doubly dear. 
 The two boys had a narrow escape from becoming Eastern princes : 
 for the hand of the widow Cornelia was sought in marriage by 
 the King of Egypt.^ Such an alliance with the representative of 
 the two houses of the Gracchi and the Scipios might easily seem 
 desirable to a protected king, although the attractions of Cornelia 
 may also have influenced his choice. She, however, had no aspira- 
 tions to share the throne of the Lagidae, and the hellenism of 
 Tiberius and of his younger brother Caius, though deep and far- 
 reaching, was of a kind less violent than would have been gained 
 by transportation to Alexandria. They were trained in rhetoric 
 by Diophanes an exile from Mitylene, and in philosophy by Blossius 
 of Cumae, a stoic of the school of Antipater of Tarsus.^ Many 
 held the belief that Tiberius was spurred to his political enter- 
 prise by the direct exhortation of these teachers ; but, even if 
 their influence was not of this definite kind, there can be little 
 doubt that the teaching of the two Greeks exercised a powerful 
 influence on the political cast of his mind. Ideals of Greek liberty, 
 speeches of Greek statesmen who had come forward as champions 
 of the oppressed, stories of social ruin averted by the voice and 
 hand of the heaven-sent legislator, pictures of self-sacrifice and 
 of resigned submission to a standard of duty — these were lessons 
 
 ' Cic. Brut. 27. 104 Fuit Gracchus diligentia Corneliae matris a pueio doctus 
 et Graecis litteris eruditus. Id. lb. 58. 211 Legimus epistulas Corneliae matris 
 Gracchorum : apparet filios non tam in gremio educates quam in sermone matris. 
 Cf. Quinctil. Inst. Or. i. 1. 6 ; Plut. Ti. Gracch. i. 
 
 ^ Plut. Ti. Gracch. i. The King referred to in this story is perhaps Ptolemy 
 Euergetes, who reigned from 146 to 117 B.C. 
 
 s Plut. Ti. Gracch. 8. 
 
TIBERIUS GRACCHUS 105 
 
 that may have been taught both by rhetorician and philosopher. 
 Nor was the teaching of history different. In the literary environ- 
 ment in which the Gracchi moved, ready answers were being 
 given to the most vital questions of politics and social science. 
 Every one must have felt that the approaching struggle had a 
 dual aspect, that it was political as well as social. For social 
 conservatism was entrenched behind a political rampart : and if 
 reform, neglected by the senate, was to come from the people, the 
 question had first to be asked. Had the people a legal right to 
 initiate reform.? The historians of that and of the preceding 
 generation would have answered this question unhesitatingly in 
 the affirmative. The de facto sovereignty of the senate had not 
 even received a sanction in contemporary literature, while to that 
 of the immediate past it was equally unknown. The- Roman 
 annalists from the time of the Second Punic War had revealed the 
 sovereignty of the people as the basis of the Roman constitution,^ 
 and the history of the long struggle of the Plebs for freedom made 
 the protection of the commons the sole justification of the tribunate. 
 From the lips of Polybius himself Tiberius may have heard the 
 impression which the Roman polity made on the mind of the 
 educated Greek : and the fact that this was a Greek picture did 
 not lessen its validity ; for the Greek was moulding the orthodox 
 history of Rome, and the victims of his genius were the best Roman 
 intellects of the day. He might have learnt how in this mixed con- 
 stitution the people still retained their inalienable rights, how they 
 elected, ratified, and above all how they punished.^ He might have 
 gathered that the identification of the tribunate with the interests 
 of the nobility was a perversion of its true and vital function : that- 
 the tribune exists but to assist the commons and can be subject to 
 no authority but the people's will, whether expressed directly by / 
 them or indirectly through his colleagues.^ The history of the 
 Punic wars did indeed reveal, in the fate of a Varro or a Minucius, 
 how popular insubordination might be punished, when its end was 
 wrong. Polybius's own voice was raised in prophetic warning against 
 a possible demagogy of the future.* But that history showed the 
 
 ' Nitzsch Die Gracchen pp. 208 foil., 258. 
 
 ^Polyb. vi. 14 Kplvfi fih ohi 6 Srjfios icai Sta<l>6pov (money penalties) iroWiKis 
 . . . SayaTOv Se Kplvei n6vos. 
 
 ^ Polyb. vi. 16 oipeiKovai S' del iroieiv 01 S^iiapxoi rb SoKoiy rif S^/Uf Kal ii.i,KiaTa 
 iTTOxdieirBai Trjs roirov fiovXiiffius. 
 
 * Polyb. vi. 57. 
 
106 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 healthy discipline of a healthy people — a people that had van- 
 quished genius through subordination, a peasant class whose loyalty 
 and tenacity were as great as those of its leaders, and without whom 
 those leaders would have been helpless. Where was such a class 
 to be found now ? Change the subject or turn the page, and the 
 Greek statesman and historian could point to the dreadful reverse 
 of this picture.^ He could show a Greek nation, gifted with 
 political genius but doomed to political decay — a nation whose 
 sons accumulated money, lived in luxury with little forethought 
 for the future, and refused to beget children for the State : a nation 
 with a wealthy and cultured upper class, but one that was literally 
 perishing for the lack of men.^ Was this the fate in store for 
 Rome ? A temperament that was merely vigorous and keen might 
 not have been affected by such reflections. One that was merely 
 contemplative might have regarded them only as a subject for 
 curious study. But Tiberius's mind ran to neither of these two 
 extremes. He was a thoughtful and sensitive man of action. 
 Sweet in temper, staid in deportment, gentle in language, he at- 
 tracted from his dependants a loyalty that knew no limits, and from 
 his friends a devotion that did not even shrink from death on his be- 
 half. Even in his pure and polished oratory passion revealed itself 
 chiefly in appeals to pity, not in the harsher forms of invective or of 
 scorn. His mode of life was simple and restrained, but apparently 
 with none of the pedantic austerity of the stoic. In an age that 
 was becoming dissolute and frivolous he was moral and somewhat 
 serious.^ But his career is not that of the man who burdens 
 society with the impression that he has a solemn mission to 
 perform. Such men are rarely taken as seriously as they take 
 themselves ; they do not win aged men of experience to support 
 their cause ; the demeanour that wearies their friends is even 
 likely to be found irksome by the mob. 
 
 Roman society must have seen much promise in his youth, for 
 honours came early. A seat at the augural board was regarded as 
 a tribute to his merit rather than his birth ; * and indeed the 
 
 ' Polyb. xxxvii. 4. _ 'Ibid. s piut_ rj_ Gracch. z. 
 
 I bid. J 4 oSrats ^y Trept^67iTos Sxttc ttjs tSjv Avyoipuv Ksyofifffis Uputrii/ris 
 d|iai9?coi 5i' hpe-r^v tmWov ^ ilk riiv €U7e>'€m;'. Tiberius may have filled the place 
 vacated by the death of his father {circa 148 B.C.). He would have been barely 
 sixteen ; and Plutarch says (I.e.) that he had but just emerged from boyhood. 
 Election to the augural college at this time was effected by co-optation. See 
 Underbill in loc. 
 
TIBERIUS GRACCHUS 107 
 
 Roman aristocrats, who dispensed such favours, were too clever to 
 be the slaves of a name, when political manipulation was in question 
 and talent might be diverted to the true cause. His marriage was 
 a more important determinant in his career. The bride who was 
 offered him was the daughter of Appius Claudius Pulcher, a man 
 of consular and censorian rank and now Princeps of the senate,^ a 
 clever representative of that brilliant and eccentric house, that had 
 always kept liberalism alive in Rome. Appius had already dis- 
 played some of the restless individuality of his ancestors. When 
 the senate had refused him a triumph after a war with the Salassi, 
 he had celebrated the pageant at his own expense, while his 
 daughter, a vestal, walked beside the car to keep at bay the im- 
 portunate tribune who attempted to drag him off.^ A similar 
 imconventionality was manifested in the present betrothal. The 
 story runs that Appius broached the question to Tiberius at an 
 augural banquet. The proposition was readily accepted, and 
 Appius in his joy shouted out the news to his wife as he entered 
 his own front door. The lady was more surprised than annoyed. 
 " What need for all this haste," she said, " unless indeed you have 
 found Tiberius Gracchus for our girl ? " ^ Appius, hasty as he was, 
 was probably in this case not the victim of a sudden inspiration. 
 The restless old man doubtless pined for reform ; but he was 
 weighed down by years, honours and familiarity with the senate. 
 He could not be the protagonist in the coming struggle ; but in 
 Tiberius he saw the man of the future. 
 
 The chances of the time favoured a military even more than a 
 political career ; the chief spheres of influence were the province 
 and the camp, and it was in these that the earliest distinctions of 
 Tiberius were won. When a lad of fifteen he had followed his 
 brother-in-law Scipio to Africa, and had been the first to mount 
 the walls of Carthage in the vain assault on the fortress of 
 Megara.* He had won the approval of the commander by his disci- 
 pline and courage, and left general regret amongst the army when 
 
 ' Plut. Ti. Gracch. 4. ^ Cic. pro Gael. 14. 34 ; Suet. Tib. 2. 
 
 ' Plut. Ti. Gracch. 4. The story is also told of the betrothal of Cornelia her- 
 self to the elder Gracchus (Liv. xxxviii. 57 ; Val. Max. iv. 2. 3 ; Gell. xii. 8) ; but 
 Plutarch records a statement of Polybius that Cornelia was not betrothed until after 
 her father's death, and Livy {I.e.) is conscious of this version. 
 
 ■•Fannius ap. Plut. Ti. Gracch. 4 toS ye nlxovs ^irc'jSij tUv iroKeiiluv irpwros. 
 As the context seems to show that Tiberius did not remain until the end of the 
 siege, the t«xoj was probably that of Megara, the suburb of Carthage (Nitzsch 
 Die Gracchen p. 244) ; cf. App. Lib. 117. 
 
108 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 137 
 
 he quitted the camp before the close of the campaign. But an 
 experience as potent for the future as his first taste of war, must 
 have been those hours of leisure spent in Scipio's tent.' If contact 
 with the great commander aroused emulation, the talk on political 
 questions of Scipio and his circle must have inspired profound 
 reflection. Here he could find aspirations enough ; all that was 
 lacking was a leader to translate them into deeds. The quaestor- 
 ship, the first round of the higher official ladder, found him attached 
 to the consul Mancinus and destined for the ever-turbulent province 
 of Spain. It was a fortunate chance, for here was the scene of his 
 father's military and diplomatic triumphs. But the sequel was 
 unexpected. He had gone to fulfil the duties of a subordinate ; he 
 suddenly found himself performing those of a commander-in-chief or 
 of an accredited representative of the Roman people. The Numan- 
 tines would treat only with a Gracchus, and the treaty that saved 
 Roman lives but not Roman honour was felt to be really his work. 
 In a moment he was involved in a political question that agitated 
 the whole of Rome. The Numantine treaty was the topic of the 
 day. Was it to be accepted or, if repudiated, should the authors 
 of the disaster, the causes of the breach of faith, be surrendered in 
 time-honoured fashion to the enemy as an expiation for the violated 
 pledge ? On the first point there was little hesitation ; the senate 
 decided for the nullity of the treaty, and it was likely that this 
 view would be accepted by the people, if the measures against the 
 ratifying officials were not made too stringent. For on this point 
 there was a difference of opinion. The poorer classes, whose sons 
 and brothers had been saved from death or captivity by the treaty, 
 blamed Mancinus as the cause of the disaster, but were grateful to 
 Tiberius as the author of the agreement. Others who had less to 
 lose and could therefore afford to stand on principle, would have 
 enforced the fullest rigour of the ancient rules and have delivered 
 up the quaestor and tribunes with the defaulting general.^ It was 
 thought that the influence of Scipio, always great with the agricul- 
 tural voters, might have availed to save even Mancinus, nay that, 
 if he would, he might have got the peace confirmed.' But his 
 efforts were believed to have been employed in favour of Tiberius. 
 
 1 Plut. l.c. 
 
 ''Plut. Ti. Gracch. 7; cf. App. Iber. 83; Nitzsch Die Gracchen p. 280; Long 
 Decline of Rom. Rep. i. p. 83. 
 ' Plut. U. 
 
137 B.C.] THE NUMANTINE TREATY 109 
 
 The matter ended in an illogical compromise. The treaty was re- 
 pudiated, but it was decreed that the general alone should be 
 surrendered.^ A breach in an ancient rule of religious law had 
 been made in favour of Tiberius. 
 
 But, in spite of this mark of popular favour, the experience had 
 been disheartening and its effect was disturbing. Although it is 
 impossible to subscribe to the opinion of later writers, who, looking 
 at the matter from a conservative and therefore unfavourable aspect, 
 saw in this early check the key to Tiberius's future action,^ yet anger 
 and fear leave their trace even on the best regulated minds. The 
 senate had torn up his treaty and placed him for the moment in 
 personal peril. It was to the people that he owed his salvation. 
 If circumstances were to develop an opposition party in Rome, he 
 was being pushed more and more into its ranks. And a coolness 
 seems to have sprung up at this time between him and the man who 
 had been his great exemplar. Tiberius took no counsel of Scipio 
 before embarking on his great enterprise ; support and advice were 
 sought elsewhere. He may have already tested Scipio's lack of 
 sympathy with an active propaganda ; shame might have kept back 
 the hint of a plan that might seem to imply a claim to leadership. 
 But it is possible that there was some feeling of resentment against 
 the warrior now before Numantia, who had done nothing to save 
 the last Numantine treaty and the honour of the name of 
 Gracchus. 
 
 His reticence could scarcely have been due to ignorance of his 
 own designs ; for his brother Caius left it on record that it was 
 while journeying northward from Rome on his way to Numantia 
 that Tiberius's eyes were first fully opened to the magnitude of the 
 malady that cried aloud for cure.' It was in Etruria, the paradise 
 of the capitalist, that he saw everywhere the imported slave and 
 
 ^ Vellei. ii. i Mancinum verecundia, poenam non recusando, perduxit hue, ut 
 per fetialis nudus ac post tergam religatis manibus dederetur hostibus. Plut. Ti. 
 Gracch. 7 riv /uey yotp SiraTov i^7}<pitTavT0 yv/jivbv Kol SeSefieyov vapaSovvai rots 
 NofiaVTivois, ray S' kwav 4^slaavT0 irdyToiv Sii Ti/Scpiov. Cf. Cic. de Off. ill. 
 30. log. 
 
 ^ Cic. Brut. 27. 103 (Ti. Gracchus) propter turbulentissimum tribunatum, ad 
 quern ex invidia foederis Numantini bonis iratus accesserat, ab ipsa re publica est 
 interfectus. Id. de Har. Resp. 20. 43 Ti. Graccho invidia Numantini foederis, cui 
 feriendo, quaestor C. Mancini consulis cum esset, interfuerat, et in eo foedere im- 
 probando senatus severitas dolori et timori fuit, eaque res ilium fortem et clarum 
 virum a gravitate patrum desciscere coegit. The same motive is suggested by 
 Vellei. ii. 2 ; Quinctil. Inst. Or. vii. 4. 13 ; Dio Cass. frg. 82 ; Oros. v. 8. 3 ; Florus 
 ii. 2 (iii. 14). 
 
 3 Plut. Ti. Gracch. 8. 
 
110 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 134 
 
 the barbarian who had replaced the freeman. It was this sight 
 that first suggested something like a definite scheme. A further 
 stimulus was soon to be found in scraps of anonymous writing 
 which appeared on porches, walls and monuments, praying for his 
 succour and entreating that the public land should be recovered for 
 the poor.i The voiceless Roman people was seeking its only mode 
 of utterance, a tribune who should be what the tribune had been 
 of old, the servant of the many not the creature of the few. To 
 Gracchus's mother his plans could hardly have been veiled. She is 
 even said to have stimulated a vague craving for action by the 
 playful remark that she was still known as the mother-in-law of 
 Scipio, not as the mother of the Gracchi.^ 
 
 But there was need of serious counsel. -Gracchus did not mean 
 to be a mere demagogue, coming before the people with a half- 
 formed plan and stirring up an agitation which could end merely 
 in some idle resolution. There were few to whom he could look 
 for advice, but those few were of the best. Three venerable men, 
 whose deeds and standing were even greater than their names, were 
 ready with their support. There was the chief pontiff, P. Licinius 
 Crassus Mucianus, the man who was said to combine in a supreme 
 degree the four great blessings of wealth, birth, eloquence and legal 
 lore ; ^ there was the brother of Crassus, P. Mucins Scaevola,' the 
 greatest lawyer of his age and already destined to the consulship 
 for the following year ; lastly there was Tiberius's father-in-law, the 
 restless Appius, now eagerly awaiting the fulfilment of a cherished 
 scheme by the man of his own choice.* 
 
 Thus fortified, Tiberius Gracchus entered on his tribunate, and 
 formulated the measure which was to leave large portions of the 
 public domain open for distribution to the poor. In the popular 
 gatherings with which he opened his campaign, he dwelt on the 
 nature of the evils which he proposed to remedy. It was the interest 
 of Italy, not merely of the Roman proletariate, that was at stake.* 
 
 ipiut. i.e. 
 
 ^ Gell. i. 13. 10 Is Crassus a Sempronio Asellione et plerisque aliis historiae 
 Romanae scriptoribus traditur habuisse quinque rerum bonarum maxima et praecipua : 
 quod esset ditissimus, quod nobilissimus, quod eloquentissimus, quod jurisconsultis- 
 simus, quod pontifex maximus, 
 
 ' Cic. Acad. Prior, ii. 5. 13 Duo . . . sapientissimos et clarissimos fratres, P. 
 Crassum et P. Scaevolam, aiunt Ti. Graccho auctores legum fuisse, alterum quidem, 
 ut videmus, palam ; alterum, ut suspicantur, obscurius. 
 
 * Plut. Ti. Gracch. g. 
 
 'App. Bell. Civ. i. 9 i(Teijiyo\6yri(re vepl toD 'ItoAucoC y4vovs. The expression 
 suggests the further question whether Gracchus intended Italians, as well as 
 
133 B.C.] THE LAND BILL 111 
 
 He pointed out how the Italian peasantry had dwindled in num- 
 bers, and how that portion of it which still survived had been 
 reduced to a poverty that was irremediable by their own efforts. 
 He showed that the slave gangs which worked the vast estates 
 were a menace, not a help, to Rome. They could not be enlisted 
 for service in the legions ; their disaffection to their masters was 
 notorious ; their danger was being proved even now by the horrible 
 condition of Sicily, the fate of its slave-owning landlords, the long, 
 difficult and eventful war which had not even yet been brought 
 to a close.i Sometimes the language of passion replaced that of 
 reason in his harangues to the crowds that pressed round the 
 Rostra. " The beasts that prowl about Italy have holes and lurk- 
 ing-places where they may make their beds. You who fight and die 
 for Italy enjoy but the blessings of air and light. These alone are 
 your heritage. Homeless, unsettled, you wander to and fro with 
 your wives and children. Our generals are in the habit of inspiring 
 their soldiers to the combat by exhorting them to repel the enemy 
 in defence of their tombs and ancestral shrines. The appeal is idle 
 and false. You cannot point to a paternal altar, you have no 
 ancestral tomb. No ! you fight and die to give wealth and luxury 
 to others. You are called the masters of the world ; yet there is no 
 clod of earth that you can call your own." ^ 
 
 The proposal, which was ushered in by these stirring appeals, 
 seemed at first sight to be of a moderate and somewhat conserva- 
 tive character. It professed to be the renewal of an older law, 
 which had limited the amount of domain land which an individual 
 might possess to five hundred jugera ; ^ it professed, that is, to re- 
 inforce an injunction which had been persistently disobeyed, for 
 this enactment restricting possession had never been repealed. The 
 extent to which a proposal of this kind is a re-enactment, in the 
 spirit as well as in the letter, depends entirely on the length of time 
 which has elapsed since the original proposal has begun to be 
 violated. A political society, which recognises custom as one of the 
 bases of law, must recognise desuetude as equally valid. A law, 
 which has not been enforced for centuries, would, by the common 
 
 Romans, to benefit by his law. On this question see p. 115. But, whatever our 
 opinion on this point, the widening of the issue by an appeal to Italian interests 
 was natural, if not inevitable. 
 
 1 App. I.e. " Plut. Ti. Gracch. 9. 
 
 2 App. Bell. Civ. i. 9 ; cf. Plut. Ti. Graceh. 8. 
 
112 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 133 
 
 consent of the courts of such nations as favour progressive legislation, 
 be regarded as no law at all. Again, the age of an ordinance de- 
 termines its suitability to present conditions. It may be justifiable 
 to revive an enactment that is centuries old ; but the revival should 
 not necessarily dignify itself with that name. It must be regarded 
 as a new/Beparture, unless the circumstances of the old and the new 
 enactment can be proved to be approximately the same. Our 
 attempts to judge the Gracchan law by these considerations ^e 
 baffled by our ignorance of the real date of the previous enactment, 
 the stringency of whose measures he wished to renew. If it was 
 the Licinian law of the middle of the fourth century,^ this law 
 must have been renewed, or must still have continued to be ob- 
 served, at a period not very long anterior to the Gracchan proposal ; 
 for Cato could point his argument against the declaration of war with 
 Rhodes by an appeal to a provision attributed to this measure ^ — 
 an appeal which would have been pointless, had the provision fallen 
 into that oblivion which persistent neglect of an enactment must 
 bring to all but the professed students of law. We can at least 
 assert that the charge against Gracchus of reviving an enactment 
 so hoary with age as to be absurdly obsolete, is not one of the 
 charges to be found even in those literary records which were most 
 unfriendly to his legislation.^ 
 
 The general principle of the measure was, therefore, the limita- 
 tion to five hundred jugera of the amount of public land that could 
 be " possessed " by an individual. The very definition of the tenure 
 immediately exempted large portions of the State's domain from 
 the operation of this rule.* The Campanian land was leased by 
 the State to individuals, not merely possessed by them as the result 
 of an occupation permitted by the government ; it, therefore, fell 
 
 ' The most respectable of the authorities for the Licinian law having dealt with 
 the land question is Varro {R. R. i. 2. g Stolonis ilia lex, quae vetat plus D jugera 
 habere civem R). A similar account is found in many other authors (Liv. vi. 35 ; 
 Vellei. ii. 6 ; Plut. Cam. 39 ; Gall. vi. 3. 40; Val. Max. viii. 6. 3). A variant in the 
 maximum amount permitted to a single holder is given by [Victor] de Vir. III. 20 
 [(Licinius Stolo) legem scivit, ne cui plebeio plus centum jugera agri habere liceret] ; 
 or the word " plebeio," if not a mistake, may suggest another clause in the supposed 
 law. 
 
 'Cato ap. Gell. vi. (vii.) 3. 37. Cato asks whether any enactment punishes 
 intent (for the Rhodians were charged with having intended hostility to Rome), and 
 points his argument by the following reductio ad absurdum of legislation conceived 
 in this spirit. Si quis plus quingenta jugera habere voluerit, tanta poena esto: si 
 quis majorem pecuum numerum habere voluerit, tantum damnas esto. 
 
 ' On this subject see Niese Das sogenannte Licinisch-sextische Ackergesetz 
 (Hermes xxiii. 1888), Soltau Das Aechtheit des licinischen Ackergesetzes von 367 
 V. Chr. (Hermes xxx. 1895). •• Mommsen in C. I. L. i. pp. 75 ff. 
 
133 B.C.] THE LAND BILL 113 
 
 outside the scope of the measure ; ^ but, as it was technically public 
 land and its ownership was vested in the State, it would have been 
 hazardous to presume its exemption ; it seems, therefore, to have 
 been specifically excluded from the operation of the bill, and a 
 similar exception was probably made in favour of many other tracts 
 of territory held under a similar tenure.^ Either Gracchus declined 
 to touch any interest that could properly describe itself as "vested," 
 even though it took merely the form of a leasehold, or he valued 
 the secure and abundant revenue which flowed into the coffers 
 of the State from these domains. There were other lands strictly 
 "public" where the claim of the holders was still stronger, and 
 where dispossession without the fullest compensation must have 
 been regarded as mere robbery. We know from later legislation 
 that respect was had to such lands as the Trientabula, estates which 
 had been granted by the Roman government at a quit rent to its 
 creditors, as security for that portion of a national debt which had 
 never been repaid. It is less certain what happened in the case of 
 lands of which the usufruct alone had been granted to communities 
 of Roman citizens or Latin colonists. Ownership in this case still 
 remained vested in the Roman people, and if the right of usufruct 
 had been granted by law, it could be removed by law. In the case 
 of Latin communities, however, it was probably guaranteed by 
 treaty, which no mere law could touch : and so similar were the 
 conditions of Roman and Latin communities in this particular, that 
 it is probable that the land whose use was conferred on whole com- 
 munities by these ancient grants, was wholly spared by the Gracchan 
 legislation. In the case of those commons which were possessed by 
 groups of villagers for the purposes of pasturage (ager compascuus),^ 
 it is not likely that the group was regarded as the unit : and 
 therefore, even in the case of such an aggregate possessing over 
 five hundred jugera, their occupation was probably left undisturbed. 
 
 ' Cic. de Leg. Agr. ii. 29. 81 Nee duo Gracchi, qui de plebis Romanae com- 
 modis plurimutn cogitaverunt, nee L. Sulla . . '. agrum Campanum attingere ausus 
 est. Cf. i. 7. 21. 
 
 ^ Exemptions were specified in the agrarian law of C. Gracchus, which must 
 have appeared in that of his elder brother. They are noticed in the extant Lex 
 agraria (C. I. L. i. n. 200; Bruns Pontes i. 3. 11) 1. 6 Extra eum agrum, quel ager 
 ex] lege plebive scito, quod C. Sempronius Ti. f. tr. pi. rog(avit), exceptum cavi- 
 tumve est nei divideretur. . . . The law of C. Gracchus is here mentioned as being 
 the later enactment. Cicero, when he writes (ad Att. i. ig. 4) of his own attitude 
 to the Flavian agrarian law of 60 B.C. Liberabam agrum eum, qui P. Mucio L. 
 Calpurnio consulibus publicus fuisset, is probably referring to land that, public in 
 133 B.C., still remained public in his own day. 
 
 ' See Voigt tjber die staatsrechtliche Possessio und den Ager Compascuus p. 229. 
 8 
 
114 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 133 
 
 All other possessors must vacate the land which exceeded the 
 prescribed limit. Such an ordinance would have been harsh, had no 
 compensation been allowed, and Gracchus proposed certain amends 
 for the loss sustained. In the first place, the five hundred jugera 
 retained by each possessor were to be increased by half as much 
 again for each son that he might possess : although it seems that 
 the amount retained was not to exceed one thousand jugera} 
 Secondly, the land so secured to existing possessors was not to be 
 held on a merely precarious tenure, and was not to be burdened by 
 the payment of dues to the State ; even if ownership was not vested 
 in its holders, they were guaranteed gratuitous undisturbed pos- 
 session in perpetuity.^ Thirdly, the bill as originally drafted even 
 suggested some monetary compensation for the land surrendered.' 
 This compensation was probably based on a valuation of stock, 
 buildings, and recent permanent improvements, which were to be 
 found on the territory now reverting to the State. It must have 
 applied for the most part only to arable land, and practically 
 amounted to a purchase by the State of items to which it could 
 lay no legal claim ; for it was the soil alone, not the buildings on 
 the soil, over which its lordship could properly be asserted. 
 
 The object of reclaiming the public land was its future dis- 
 tribution amongst needy citizens. This distribution might have 
 taken either of two forms. Fresh colonies might have been planted, 
 or the acquired land might merely be assigned to settlers who were 
 to belong to the existing political organisations. It was the latter 
 method of simple assignation that Gracchus chose. There was felt 
 to be no particular need for new political creations ; for the pacifica- 
 tion of Italy seemed to be accomplished, and the new farming class 
 would perform their duty to the State equally well as members of 
 the territory of Rome or of that of the existing municipia and 
 
 ^ App. Bell. Civ. I, 9 aveKaiyt^e rhy v6nov ju^Sej/a ruv ireVTaKotTiuv irXeGpwv irK4oy 
 ^X^^^t TTOitri 8' aiiToov irtrep t})v iraXaibv v6fiOv TrpotreTiOfi Tot iffilffea roirav. Liv. Ep. 
 Iviii Ne quis ex publico agro plus quam mille jugera possideret, cf. [Victor] de Vir. 
 III. 64. The conclusion stated in the text, which is gained by a combination of 
 these passages, is, however, somewhat hazardous. 
 
 ^App. Bell. Civ. I. II iK^Keve Tobs iT\ovariovs . . . )tt^, ^v ^ irepl /iiKpuy 
 Siatpepoyratj rwv ir\€6v(i>y uTreptSetj/, juitrdbj/ ojita ttjs TreirovTjfievris i^epyaffias avrdpKr] 
 tjiepofihovs T^v 4^alpeT0v caieh n/iijs KTrjffLP h i,e\ pi$atoii exiaTtf irevraicoiTtav irXiBpav, 
 Kal traitrivt oh ettrl n-ai56S, eKtiffTCp Kai tovtwv ret Tjfii<r€a. If ayev Tijtiijs means " with- 
 out paying for it," the phrase has no relation to the Tifi-li mentioned by Plutarch 
 (see the next note) which was a valuation to be received by the dispossessed. It 
 can scarcely mean " without further compensation " ; but, if interpreted in this way, 
 the two accounts can be brought into some relation with each other. 
 
 ^ Plut. Ti. Gracch, 9 ixiXtvire tiijAiv irpoaKajji^ivovTai iK$aiyeiy Sv iSixus iKCKniVTO. 
 
133 B.C.] THE LAND BILL 115 
 
 coloniae of Roman citizens. There is some evidence that the new 
 proprietors were not ail to be attached to the city of Rome itself, 
 but that many, perhaps most, were to be attributed to the existing 
 colonies and municipia, in the neighbourhood of which their allot- 
 ments lay.^ The size of the new allotments which Gracchus pro- 
 jected is not known ; it probably varied with the needs and status 
 of the occupier, perhaps with the quality of the land, and there 
 is some indication that the maximum was fixed at thirty jugera? 
 This is an amount that compares favourably with the two, three, 
 seven or ten jugera of similar assignments in earlier times, and is at 
 once a proof of the decrease in the value of land — a decrease which 
 had contributed to the formation of the large estates — and of the 
 large amount of territory which was expected to be reclaimed by the 
 provisions of the new measure. The all otments thus assigned were not, 
 however, to be the freehold property of their recipients. They were, 
 indeed, heritable and to be held on a perfectly secure tenure by the 
 assignees and their descendants ; but a revenue was to be paid to 
 the State for their use : and they were to be inalienable — the latter 
 provision being a desperate expedient to check the land-hunger of 
 the capitalist, and to save the new settlers from obedience to the 
 economic tendencies of the times.^ 
 
 It is doubtful whether the social object of Gracchus could have 
 been fully accomplished, had he confined his attention wholly to the 
 existing citizens of Rome. The area of economic distress was wider 
 than the citizen body, and it was the salvation of Italy as a whole 
 that Gracchus had at heart.* There is much reason for supposing 
 that some of the Italian allies were to be recipients of the benefits 
 of the measure.* In earlier assignations the Latins had not been 
 excluded, and it is probable that at least these, whether members 
 of old communities or of colonies, were intended to have some share 
 in the distribution. There could be no legal hindrance to such par- 
 ticipation. With respect to rights in land, the Latins were already 
 on a level with Roman citizens, and their exclusion from the new 
 allotments would have been due to a mere political prejudice which 
 is not characteristic either of Gracchus or his plans. 
 
 1 Siculus Flaccus (p. 136 Lachm.) ; cf. Mommsen I.e. 
 
 * There is a reference to this limit in the extant Lex Agraria (C. I. L. i. n, 
 800 ; Bruns Pontes i. 3. 11) 1. 14 Sei quis] . . . agri jugra non amplius xxx 
 possidebit habebitve, but there is no direct evidence to connect it with the Gracchan 
 legislation. 
 
 ' App. Bell. Civ. i. 10. * Cf. p. no. » Mommsen l.c. 
 
116 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 133 
 
 The ineffectiveness of laws at Rome was due chiefly to the 
 apathy of the executive authority. Gracchus saw clearly that his 
 measure would, like other social efforts of the past, become a mere 
 pious resolution, if its execution were entrusted to the ordinary 
 officials of the State.^ But a special commission, which should effec- 
 tually carry out the work which he contemplated, must be of a very 
 unusual -kind. The magnitude of the task, and the impossibility of 
 assigning any precise limit of time to its completion, made it essen- 
 tial that the Triumvirate which he established should bear the 
 appearance of a regular but extraordinary magistracy of the State. 
 The three commissioners created by the bill were to be elected an- 
 nually by the Comitia of the Tribes.^ Re-election of the same 
 individuals was possible, and the new magistracy was to come to 
 an end only with the completion of its work. Its occupants, per- 
 haps, possessed the Imperium from the date of the first institution 
 of the office ; they certainly exercised it from the moment when, as 
 we shall see, their functions of assignment were supplemented by 
 the addition of judicial powers. Gracchus was doubtless led to this 
 new creation purely by the needs of his measure ; but he showed 
 to later politicians the possibility of creating a new and powerful 
 magistracy under the guise of an agrarian law. 
 
 Such was the measure that seemed to its proposer a reasonable 
 and equitable means of remedying a grave injustice and restoring 
 rather than giving rights to the poor. He might, if he would, 
 have insisted on simple restitution. Had he pressed the letter of 
 the law, not an atom of the public domain need have been left to 
 its present occupiers. The possessor had no rights against the 
 State ; he held on sufferance, and technically he might be supposed 
 to be always waiting for his summons to ejectment. To give such 
 people something over and above the limit that the laws had so long 
 prescribed, to give them further a security of tenure for the land 
 
 *App. Bell. Civ. i. lo. 
 
 ^Cic. de Leg. Agr. ii. i2. 31 Audes etiam, RuUe, mentionem facere legis 
 Semproniae, nee te ea lex ipsa commonet III viros illos XXXV tribuum suffragio 
 creates esse ? App. Bell. Civ. i. g xpoo-cT^flfi . . . riiv Xonriiv rpeh atperobs &uSpas, 
 ivaWa<r<roii4vovs kut" ^tos, Siav^iieiv toIs irivifcnv. Strachan-Davidson {in loc.) doubts 
 this latter characteristic of the magistracy. The history of the land-commission 
 proves at least that the occupants of the post were perpetually re-eligible and could 
 be chosen in their absence. Thus Gracchus, in spite of his two years' quaestorship 
 in Sardinia, was still a commissioner in 124 B.C. (App. Bell. Civ. i. 21). See 
 Mommsen Staatsr. ii. i. p. 632. The electing body was doubtless the plebeian 
 assembly of the tribes under the guidance of a tribune. This was the mode 
 prescribed by Rullus's law of 63 B.C. (Cic. de Leg. Agr. ii. 7. 16). 
 
133 B.C.] OPPOSITION TO THE BILL 117 
 
 retained which amounted almost to complete ownership — were not 
 these unexpected concessions that should be received with gratitude ? 
 And even up to the eve of the polling the murmurs of the opposi- 
 tion were sometimes met by appeals to its nobler sentiments. The 
 rich, said Gracchus, if they had the interests of Italy, its future hopes 
 and its unborn generations at heart, should make this land a free 
 gift to the State ; they were vexing themselves about small issues 
 and refusing to face the greater problems of the day.^ 
 
 But personal interests can never seem small, and the average man 
 is more concerned with the present than with the future. The 
 opposition was growing in volume day by day, and the murmurs 
 were rising into shrieks. The class immediately threatened must 
 have been numerically small ; but they made up in combination 
 and influence what they lacked in numbers. It was always easy to 
 startle the solid commercial world of Rome by the cry of " confis- 
 cation ". A movement in this direction might have no limits ; the 
 socialistic device of a "re-division of land," which had so often 
 thrown the Greek commonwealths into a ferment, was being im- 
 ported into Roman politics. All the forces of respectability should 
 be allied against this sinister innovation. It is probable that many 
 who propagated these views honestly believed that they exactly 
 fitted the facts of the case. The possessors did indeed know that 
 they were not owners. They were reminded of the fact whenever 
 they purchased the right of occupation from a previous possessor, 
 for such a title could not pass by mancipation ; or whenever they 
 sued for the recovery of an estate from which they had been ejected, 
 for they could not make the plea before the praetor that the land 
 was theirs " according to the right of the Quirites," but could rely 
 only on the equitable assistance of the magistrate tendered through 
 the use of the possessory interdicts ; or, more frequently still, when- 
 ever they paid their dues to the Publicanus, that disinterested 
 middle-man, who had no object in compromising with the possessors, 
 and could seldom have allowed an acre of land to escape his watchful 
 eye. But, in spite of these reminders, there was an impression that 
 the tenure was perfectly secure, and that the State would never again 
 re-assert its lordship in the extreme form of dispensing entirely with 
 its clients. Gracchus might talk of compensation, but was there 
 any guarantee that it would be adequate, and, even supposing 
 
 'App. Bell. Civ. i. ii. 
 
118 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 133 
 
 material compensation to be possible, what solace was that to out- 
 raged feelings ? Ancestral homes, and even ancestral tombs, were 
 not grouped on one part of a domain, so that they could be saved 
 by an owner when he retained his five hundred jugera ; they 
 were scattered all over the broad acres. Estates that technically 
 belonged to a single man, and were therefore subject to the opera- 
 tion of the law, had practically ceased to confer any benefit on 
 the owner, and were pledged to other purposes. They had been 
 divided as the peculia of his sons, they had been promised as the 
 dowry of his daughters. Again those former laws may have rightly 
 forbidden the occupation of more than a certain proportion of land ; 
 but much of the soil now in possession had not been occupied by 
 its present inhabitant; he had bought the right to be there in 
 hard cash from the former tenant. And think of the invested cap- 
 ital ! Dowries had been swallowed up in the soil, and the Gracchan 
 law was confiscating personal as well as real property, taking the 
 wife's fortune as well as the husband's. Nay, if the history of the 
 public land were traced, could it not be shown that such value as 
 it now possessed had been given it by its occupiers or their ancestors .'' 
 The land was not assigned in early times, simply because it was not 
 worth assignation. It was land that had been reclaimed for use, 
 and of this use the authors of its value were now to be deprived.^ 
 
 Such was the plaint of the land-holders, one not devoid of 
 equity and, therefore, awakening a response in the minds of timid 
 and sober business men, who were as yet unaiFected by the danger. 
 But some of these found their own personal interests at stake. So 
 good had the tenure seemed, that it had been accepted as security 
 for debt,^ and the Gracchan attack united for once the usually 
 hostile ranks of mortgagers and mortgagees. The alarm spread from 
 Rome to the outlying municipalities.^ Even in the city itself a 
 very imperfect view of the scope of the bill was probably taken by 
 
 1 Cf. App. Bell. Civ. i. lo. 
 
 ^ App. I.e. Saveiarai t€ xP^^ '^"^ Tavnjs iveSe'iKyvov. 
 
 ^ App. I.e. irXTJdos &\\o SfToy iy rais airoiKots irSKeiny ^ rats iffOTroKiriiriv ^ &\\us 
 iKoivdyei TTjtrSe ttjs y^s, SeSitfres ifioius iirrl^ffay Kal is eKarepovs avruy Sis^epi^oyTO. 
 IffoiroXlTiSes would naturally be the municipia {cf. Lex. Agraria 1. 31) ; but Strachan- 
 Davidson (in loc.) thinks that the civitates foederatae are here intended. There is a 
 possibility that Appian has used the term vaguely : but there is no real difficulty in 
 conceiving the municipia to be meant. Even the majority, that had received Roman 
 citizenship, still continued to bear the name, and they may have continued to enjoy 
 municipal rights in public land. The wealthier classes in these towns were there- 
 fore alarmed ; the poorer classes (possessed of Roman citizenship) hoped for a share 
 in the assignment. 
 
133 B.C.] OPPOSITION TO THE BILL 119 
 
 the proletariate. We may imagine the distorted form in which it 
 reached the ears of the occupants of the country towns. " Was it 
 true that the land which had been given them in usufruct was to 
 be taken away ? " was the type of question asked in the municipia 
 and in the colonies, whether Roman or Latin. The needier mem- 
 bers of these towns received the news with very different feelings. 
 They had every chance of sharing in the local division of the spoils, 
 and their voices swelled the chorus of appi'oval with which the 
 poorer classes everywhere received the Gracchan law. Amidst this 
 proletariate certain catch-words — well-remembered fragments of 
 Gracchus's speeches — had begun to be the familiar currency of the 
 day. " The numberless campaigns through which this land has 
 been won," " The iniquity of exclusion from what is really the pro- 
 perty of the State," "The disgrace of employing the treacherous 
 slave in place of the free-born citizen '' — such was the type of 
 remark with which the Roman working-man or idler now enter- 
 tained his fellow. All Roman Italy was in a blaze, and there 
 must have been a sense of insecurity and anxiety even in those 
 aUied towns whose interest in Roman domain-land was remote. 
 Might not State interests be as lightly violated as individual in- 
 terests by a sovereign people : and was not the example of Rome 
 almost as perilous as her action.? 
 
 The opponents of Gracchus had no illusions as to the numerical 
 strength which he could summon to his aid. If the battle were 
 fought to a finish in the Comitia, there could be no doubt as to 
 his triumphant victory. Open opposition could serve no purpose 
 except to show what a remnant it was that was opposing the people's 
 wishes. But there was a means of at least delaying the danger, of 
 staving off the attack as long as Gracchus remained tribune, per- 
 haps of giving the people an opportunity of recovering completely 
 from their delirium. When the college of tribunes moved as a 
 united body, its force was irresistible ; but now, as often before, 
 there was some division in its ranks. It was not likely that ten 
 men, drawn from the order of the nobility, should view with equal 
 favour such a radical proposal as that of Tiberius Gracchus. 
 But the popular feeling was so strong that for a time even the 
 unsympathetic members of the board hesitated to protest, and 
 no colleague of Tiberius is known to have opposed the move- 
 ment in its initial stages. Even the man who was subsequently 
 won over to the capitalist interest hesitated long before taking 
 
120 A HISTORY OF HOME C^^- 133 
 
 the formidable step. It was believed, however, that the hesi- 
 tancy of Marcus Octavius was due more to his personal regard 
 for Tiberius than to respect for the people's wishes.^ The tribune 
 who was to scotch the obnoxious measure was an excellent mstru- 
 ment for a dignified opposition. He was grave and discreet, a per- 
 sonal friend and intimate of Tiberius.^ It is true that he was a 
 large holder on the public domain, and that he would suffer by the 
 operation of the new agrarian law. But it was fitting that the 
 landlord class should be represented by a landlord, and, if there had 
 been the least suspicion of sordid motives, it would have been re- 
 moved by Octavius's refusal to accept private compensation for 
 himself from the slender means of Tiberius Gracchus.^ The offer 
 itself reads like an insult, but it was probably made in a moment of 
 passionate and unreflecting fervour. Neither the profferer nor the 
 refuser could have regarded it in the light of a bribe. Even when 
 the veto had been pronounced, the daily contest between the two 
 tribunes in the Forum never became a scene of unseemly recrimina- 
 tion. The war of words revolved round the question of principle. 
 Both disputants were at white heat ; yet not a word was said by 
 either which conveyed a reflection on character or motive.' 
 
 These debates followed the first abortive meeting of the As- 
 sembly. As the decisive moment approached, streams of country 
 folk had poured into Rome to register their votes in favour of the 
 measure.* The Contio had given way to the Comitia, the people 
 had been ready to divide, and Gracchus had ordered his scribe to 
 read aloud the words of the bill. Octavius had bidden the scribe 
 to be silent ; * the vast meeting had melted away, and all the 
 labours of the reformer seemed to have been in vain. To accept a 
 temporary defeat under such circumstances was in accordance with 
 the constitutional spirit of the times. The veto was a mode of 
 encouraging reflection ; it might yield to a prolonged campaign, 
 but it was regarded as a barrier against a hasty popular impulse 
 which, if unchecked, might prove ruinous to some portion of the 
 community. Gracchus, however, knew perfectly well that it was 
 now being used in the interest o^ a small minority, and he held the 
 
 " Plut. Ti. Gracch. lo. 2 Plut. I.e. 
 
 " Plut. I.e. oiSh ciVeiv \4yovTai wepi AW^Acov <p\avp6v, oiiSe ^fj/ia wpocneiretv 
 SaTspov irphs rhv frepov Si' opyi/v ivenirifiSetov. 
 
 Diod. xxxiv. 6 crvp^ppeov «'j rijv 'P(iS(ii7)v 01 Sx\oi &iri t^j x*"?** axnrepel iroTH^o/ 
 Tiv€S fh T^y wdvTa Svva/i^iiTiy Sex€<rBai edKarrav. 
 
 " App. Bell. Civ. i. 12. 
 
133 B.C.] GRACCHUS'S ATTEMPT AT COERCION 121 
 
 rights which it protected to be non-existent ; he believed the ques- 
 tion of agrarian reform to be bound up with his own personality, 
 and its postponement to be equivalent to its extinction ; he had 
 no intention of allowing his own political life to be a failure, and, 
 instead of discarding his weapons of attack, he made them more 
 formidable than before. Perhaps in obedience to popular outcries, 
 he redrafted his bill in a form which rendered it more drastic and 
 less equitable.^ It is possible that some of the douceurs given to 
 the possessors by his original proposal were not really in accordance 
 with his own judgment. They were meant to disarm opposition. 
 Now that opposition had not been disarmed, they could be re- 
 moved without danger. The stricter measure had the same chance 
 of success or failure as the less severe. We do not know the nature 
 of the changes which were now introduced ; but it is possible 
 that the pecuniary compensation offered for improvements on the 
 land to be resumed was either abolished or rendered less adequate 
 than before. 
 
 But even the form of the law was unimportant in comparison 
 with the question of the method by which the new opposition was 
 to be met. The veto, if persisted in by Octavius, would suspend 
 the agrarian measure during the whole of Tiberius's year of office. 
 It could only be countered by a device which would make govern- 
 ment so impossible that the opposition would be forced to come to 
 terms. The means were to be found in the prohibitive power of 
 the tribunes, that right, which flowed from their major potestas, 
 of forbidding under threat of penalties the action of all other 
 magistrates. It was now rarely used except at the bidding of the 
 senate and for certain specified purposes. It had become, in fact, 
 little more than the means of enforcing obedience to a temporary 
 suspension of business life decreed by the government. But recent 
 events suggested a train of associations that brought back to mind 
 the great political struggles of the past, and recalled the mode in 
 which Licinius and Sextius had for five years sustained their an- 
 archical edict for the purpose of the emancipation of the; Plebs. 
 The difference between the conditions of life in primitive Rome 
 
 '■ Plut. Ti. Gracch. lo vapo^vvSAs 6 Tifiepios rbv liep (fnKiivBpuirov iirai/flMro vS/iov, 
 rhv S' riSla re to7s itoWols koI a^oSp6repov eirl Tois iSiKovvras elae^epev ffSr), Ke\eiav 
 i^iffraarSat Trjj xiipas fjy iKexTTivro Tapii robs irporepovs v6/wvs. Plutarch is apparently 
 thinking of the abolition of what he calls the Ti/iii (e.g.) ; but his words do not 
 necessarily imply that the original concessions mentioned by Appian (p. 114) were 
 removed. 
 
A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 133 
 
 and in the cosmopolitan capital of to-day did not appeal to 
 Tiberius. The Justitium was as legitimate a method of political 
 warfare as the Intercessio. He issued an edict which forbade all 
 the other magistracies to perform their official functions until the 
 voting on the agrarian law should be carried through ; he placed 
 his own seals on the doors of the temple of Saturn to prevent the 
 quaestors from making payments to the treasury or withdrawing 
 money from it ; he forbade the praetors to sit in the courts of justice 
 and announced that he would exact a fine from those who dis- 
 obeyed. The magistrates obeyed the edict, and most of the active 
 life of the State was in suspense.^ The fact of their obedience 
 showed the overwhelming power which Tiberius now had behind 
 him ; for an ill-supported tribune, who adopted such an obsolete 
 method of warfare, would have been unable to enforce his decrees 
 and would merely have appeared ridiculous. The opponents of 
 the law were now genuinely alarmed. Those who would be the 
 chief sufferers put on garments of mourning, and paced the silent 
 Forum with gloom and despair written on their faces, as though 
 they were the innocent victims of a great wrong. But, while 
 they took this overt means of stirring the commiseration of the 
 crowd, it was whispered that the last treacherous device for 
 averting the danger was being tried. The cause would perish 
 with the demagogue, and Tiberius might be secretly removed. 
 Confidence in this view was strengthened when it was known that 
 the tribune carried a dagger concealed about his person.^ 
 
 An attempt was now made to discover whether the pressure 
 had been sufficient and whether the veto would be repeated. 
 Gracchus again summoned the assembly, the reading of the bill 
 was again commenced and again stopped at the instance of 
 Octavius.^ This second disappointment nearly led to open riot. 
 The vast crowd did not immediately disperse ; it felt its great 
 physical strength and the utter weakness of the regular organs of 
 government. There were ominous signs of an appeal to force, 
 when two men of consular rank, Manlius and Fulvius,* inter- 
 vened as peacemakers. They threw themselves at the feet of 
 
 1 Plut. Ti. Gracch. lo. a Plut. l.c. 
 
 ' App. Bell. Civ. I. 12. Plutarch {Ti. Gracch. ii) preserves a tradition that the 
 meeting was practically broken up by the adherents of the possessore! who, to 
 prevent the passing of an illegal decree, carried off the voting urns. 
 
 '^VliKMos Kol ^oiKfiios (Plut. Ti. Gracch. ii). Schafer (Jahrb./. Class. Philol. 
 1873 p. 71) thinks that the first name is a mistake for that of Manilius the jurist, 
 consul in 149 B.C., and that the second refers to Ser. Fulvius Flaccus, consul in 
 135 B-c. 
 
133 B.C.] FRUITLESS REFERENCE TO THE SENATE 123 
 
 Tiberius, they clasped his hands, they besought him with tears to 
 pause before he committed himself to an act of violence. Tiberius 
 was not insensible to the appeal. The immediate future was dark 
 enough, and the entreaties of these revered men had saved an 
 awkward situation. He asked them what they held that he 
 should do. They answered that they were not equal to advise on 
 a matter of such vast import ; but that there was the senate. Why 
 not submit the whole matter to the judgment of the great council 
 of the State ? Tiberius's own attitude to this proposal may have 
 been influenced by the fact that it was addressed to his colleagues 
 as well as to himself,^ and that they apparently thought it a rea- 
 sonable means of relieving the present situation. It is difficult to 
 believe that the man who had never taken the senate into his con- 
 fidence over so vital a matter as the agrarian law, could have had 
 much hope of its sympathy now. But his conviction of the inherent 
 reasonableness of his proposal,^ of his own power of stating the 
 case convincingly, and his knowledge that the senate usually did 
 yield at a crisis, that its government was only possible because it 
 consistently kept its finger on the pulse of popular opinion, may 
 have directed his acceptance of its advice. Immediate resort was 
 had to the Curia. The business of the house must have been 
 immediately suspended to listen to a statement of the merits of 
 the agrarian measure, and to a description of the political situation 
 which it had created. When the debate began, it was obvious that 
 there was nothing but humiliation in store for the leaders of the 
 popular movement. The capitalist class was represented by an 
 overwhelming majority ; carping protests and riddling criticism were 
 heard on every side, and Tiberius probably had never been told so 
 many home truths in his life. It was useless to prolong the discussion, 
 and Tiberius was glad to get into the open air of the Forum again. 
 He had formed his resolution, and now made a proposal which, if 
 carried through, might remove the deadlock by means that might 
 be construed as legitimate. The new device was nothing less than 
 the removal of his colleague Octavius from oflice. He announced 
 that at the next meeting of the Assembly two questions would be 
 put before the Plebs, the acceptance of the law and the continuance 
 by Octavius of his tenure of the tribunate.^ The latter question 
 was to be raised on the general issue whether a tribune who 
 
 ' App. Bell. Civ. I. 12 oi Swarol robs Siiiitipx'"'' ii^lovv iTirpiifiai rp fiouAp irepl 
 ^y Suul>4poyrai. ° ^PP- ^■'■- 
 
124 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C, 133 
 
 acted contrary to the interests of the people was to continue in 
 office. At the appointed time ^ Octavius's constancy was again 
 tested, and he again stood firm. Tiberius broke out into one of 
 his emotional outbursts, seizing his colleague's hands, entreating 
 him to do this great favour to the people, reminding him that 
 their claims were just, were nothing in proportion to their toils 
 and dajigers. When this appeal had been rejected, Tiberius summed 
 up the impossibility of the situation in terms which contained a 
 condemnation of the whole growth and structure of the Roman 
 constitution. It was not in human power, he said, to prevent 
 open war between magistrates of equal authority who were at 
 variance on the gravest matters of state ; ^ the only way which he 
 saw of securing peace was the deposition of one of them from 
 office. He did not care in the present instance which it was. The 
 people would be the arbiter. Let his own deposition be proposed 
 by Octavius ; he would walk quietly away into a private station, if 
 this were the will of the citizens. The man who spoke thus had 
 more completely emancipated himself from Roman formulae than 
 any Roman of the past. To Octavius it must have seemed a mere 
 outburst of Greek demagogism. The offer too was an eminently 
 safe one to make under the circumstances. On no grounds could 
 it be accepted. At this point the proceedings were adjourned to 
 allow Octavius time for deliberation. 
 
 On the following day Gracchus announced that the question of 
 deposition would be taken first, and a fresh and equally vain appeal 
 was made to the feelings of the unshaken Octavius.^ The question 
 was then put, not as a vague and general resolution, but as a de- 
 terminate motion that Octavius be deprived of the tribunate. The 
 thirty-five tribes voted, and when the votes of seventeen had been 
 handed up and proclaimed,* and the voice of but one was lacking 
 to make Octavius a private citizen, Tiberius as the presiding tribune 
 stopped for a moment the machinery of the election. He again 
 showed himself as a revolutionist unfortunate in the possession of 
 a political and personal conscience. The people were witnessing a 
 more passionate scene than ever, one that may appear as the last 
 effort of reconciliation between the two social forces that were to 
 
 ^ Or in a contio held before the meeting. The scene is described in Plut. Ti. 
 Gracch. ii. 
 
 ^ Plut. /.c. vTTsnr^v (5 Ti$4pios us ovk etrriy &pxovTas a/^tpoTepovs Kal nepl Trpayfidrav 
 fieydKaiv &7r' t<r7]s i^ouirias Stcul)epofievous &vev iroAe/iou Ste^eKBftv Thy XP^^^^' 
 
 ' Plut. Ti. Gracch. 12. * Cf. Moramsen Staatsr. iii. p. 409, note i. 
 
133 B.C.] DEPOSITION OF OCTAVIUS 125 
 
 meet in terrible conflict. Gracchus's arms were round his opponent's 
 neck ; broken appeals fell from his lips — the old one that he should 
 not break the heart of the people : the new one that he should not 
 cause his own degradation, and leave a bitter memory in the mind 
 of the author of his fall. Observers saw that Octavius's heart was 
 touched ; his eyes were filled with tears, and for some time he kept 
 a troubled silence. But he soon remembered his duty and his 
 pledge. Tiberius might do with him what he would. Gracchus 
 called the gods to witness that he would willingly have saved his 
 colleague from dishonour, and ordered the resumption of the an- 
 nouncement of the votes. The bill became law and Octavius was 
 stripped of his office. It was probably because he declined to 
 recognise the legality of the act that he still lingered on the Rostra. 
 One of the tribunician viatores, a freedman of Gracchus, was com- 
 manded to fetch him down. When he reached the ground, a rush 
 was made at him by the mob; but his supporters rallied round 
 him, and Tiberius himself rushed from the Rostra to prevent the 
 act of violence. Soon he was lost in the crowd and hurried unob- 
 served from the tumult.^ His place in the tribunician college was 
 filled up by the immediate election of one Quintus Mummius.^ 
 
 The members of the assembly that deposed Octavius may have 
 been the spectators and authors of a new precedent in Roman 
 history, one that was often followed in the closing years of the 
 Republic, but one that may have received no direct sanction from 
 the records of the past. The abrogation of the imperium of a pro- 
 consul had indeed been known,^ but the deposition of a city magis- 
 trate during his year of office seems to have been a hitherto untried 
 experiment. We cannot on this ground alone pronounce it to have 
 been illegal ; for an act never attempted before may have perfect 
 legal validity, as the first occasion on which a legitimate deduction 
 has been made from admitted principles of the constitution. It 
 had always been allowed that under certain circumstances (chiefly 
 the neglect of the proper formalities of election) a magistrate might 
 be invited to abdicate his office ; but the fact of this invitation is 
 itself an evidence for the absence of any legal power of suspension. 
 Tradition, however, often supplemented the defects of historical 
 
 ' Plut. Ti. Gracch. 12. 
 
 " This is the name given by Appian (Bell. Civ ±. 13) ; Plutarch {Ti. Gracch. 13) 
 calls him Mucius ; Orosius (v. 8. 3) Minucius. 
 
 ' App, Iber. 83. Cf. Liv. xxvii. 20, xxix. ig. See Mommsen Siaatsr. i. p. 629. 
 
126 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 1S3 
 
 evidence, and one, perhaps the older, tale of the removal of the 
 first consul Collatinus stated that it was effected by a popular 
 measure introduced by his colleague.* This story was a fragment 
 of that tradition of popular sovereignty which animated the his- 
 torical literature of the age of the Gracchi : and one deduction from 
 that theory may well have seemed to be that the sovereign people 
 could change its ministers as it pleased. It was a deduction, how- 
 ever, that was not drawn even in the best period of democratic 
 Athens ; it ran wholly counter to the Roman conception of the 
 magistracy as an authority co-ordinate with the people and one 
 that, if not divinely appointed, received at least something of a 
 sacred character from the fact of investiture with office. Even the 
 prosecution of a magistrate for the gravest crime, although tech- 
 nically permissible during his year of office, had as a rule been 
 relegated to the time when he again became a private citizen; 
 the tribunician college, in particulai-, had generally thrown its pro- 
 tecting shield around its offending members, and had thus sustained 
 its own dignity and that of the people. But, even if it be supposed 
 that the sovereign could, at any moment and without any of the 
 due formalities, proclaim itself a competent court of justice, and 
 even though removal from office might be improperly represented 
 as a punishment, there was the question of the offence to be con- 
 sidered. No crime known to the law had been charged against 
 Octavius. In the exercise of his admitted right, or, as he might 
 have expressed it, of his sacred duty, he had offended against the 
 will of a majority. The analogy of the criminal law was from this 
 point of view hopeless, and was therefore not pressed on this occa- 
 sion. From another point of view it was not quite so remote. The 
 tumultuous popular assemblages that had, on the bidding of a 
 prosecuting tribune, often condemned commanders for vague offences 
 hardly formulated in any particular law, scarcely differed, except 
 in the fact that no previous magisterial inquiry had been con- 
 ducted, from the meeting that deposed Octavius. The gulf that 
 lies between proceedings in a parliament and proceedings in a court 
 of law, was far less in Rome than it would have been in those 
 Hellenic communities that possessed a developed system of criminal 
 judicature. 
 
 If criminal analogies failed, a purely political ground of defence 
 
 ^ Mommsen l,c. 
 
133 B.C.] THE LAND BILL BECOMES LAW 127 
 
 must be adduced. This could hardly be based on considerations 
 of abstract justice, although, as we shall see, an attempt was made 
 by Tiberius Gracchus to give it even this foundation. Could it 
 be based on convenience ? Obviously, as Gracchus saw, his act was 
 the only effective means of removing a deadlock created by a con- 
 stitution which knew only magistrates and people and had effectively 
 crippled both. So far, it might be defended on grounds of tem- 
 porary necessity. But an act of this kind could not die. To what 
 consequences might not its repetition lead ? Imagine a less serious 
 question, a less representative assembly. Think of the possibility 
 of a few hundred desperate members of the proletariate gathering 
 on the Capitoline hill and deposing a tribune who represented the 
 interests of the vast outlying population of Rome. This is a con- 
 sequence which, it is true, was not realised in the future. But that 
 was only because the tribunate was more than Gracchus conceived 
 it, and was too strong in tradition and associations of sanctity to 
 be broken even by his attack. The scruples which troubled him 
 most arose from the suspicion that the sacred office itself might have 
 been held to suffer by the deposition of Octavius, and it was to a 
 repudiation of this view that he subsequently devoted the larger 
 part of his systematic defence of his action. 
 
 At the same meeting at which Octavius was deposed, the agrarian 
 bill was for the first time read without interruption to the people 
 and immediately became law. Shortly after, the election of the 
 commissioners was proceeded with and resulted in the appointment 
 of Tiberius Gracchus himself, of his father-in-law Appius Claudius 
 and of Gracchus's younger brother Caius.^ It was perhaps natural 
 that the people should pin their faith on the family of their champion ; 
 but it could hardly have increased the confidence of the community 
 as a whole in the wisdom with which this delicate task would 
 be executed, to find that it was entrusted to a family party, one 
 of which was a mere boy; and the mistrust must have been in- 
 creased when, somewhat later in the course of the year, the thorny 
 questions which immediately encompassed the task of distribution 
 led to the introduction by Tiberius of another law, which gave 
 judicial power to the triumvirs, for the purpose of determining what 
 was public land and what was private.^ The fortunes of the richer 
 
 ' App. Bell. Civ. I. 13 ; Plut. Ti. Gracch. 13. 
 
 " Liv. Ep. Iviii Promulgavit et aliam legem agrariam, qua sibi latius agrum 
 patefaceret, ut iidem triumviri judicarent qua publicus ager, qua privatus esset. 
 
128 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 133 
 
 classes seemed now to be entrusted to one man, who combined 
 in his own person the tribunician power and the imperium, whose 
 jurisdiction must have seriously infringed that of the regular courts, 
 and who was assisted in issuing his probably inappellable decrees 
 by a father-in-law and a younger brother. But, although effective 
 protest was impossible, the senate showed its resentment by acts 
 that might appear petty and spiteful, did we not remember that they 
 were the only means open to this body of passing a vote of censure 
 on the recent proceedings. The senate controlled every item of the 
 expenditure ; and when the commissioners appealed to it for their 
 expenses, it refused a tent and fixed the limit of supplies at a de- 
 narius and a half a day. The instigator of this decree was the ex- 
 consul Scipio Nasica, a heavy loser by the agrarian law, a man of 
 strong and passionate temper who was every day becoming a more 
 infuriated opponent of Tiberius Gracchus.^ 
 
 Meanwhile the latter had celebrated a peaceful triumph which 
 far eclipsed the military pageants of the imperators of the past. The 
 country people, before they returned to their farms, had escorted 
 him to his house ; they had hailed him as a greater than Romulus, 
 as the founder, not of a city nor of a nation, but of all the peoples 
 of Italy.^ It is true that his escort was only the poor, rude mob. 
 Stately nobles and clanking soldiers were not to be seen in the pro- 
 cession. But they were better away. This was the true apotheosis 
 of a real demagogism. And the suspicion of the masses was as 
 readily fired as their enthusiasm. A friend of Tiberius died sud- 
 denly and ugly marks were seen upon the body. There was a cry 
 of poison ; the bier was caught up on the shoulders of the crowd 
 and borne to the place of burning. A vast throng stood by to see 
 the corpse consumed, and the ineffectiveness of the flames was held 
 a thorough confirmation of the truth of their suspicions.^ It re- 
 mained to see how far this protective energy would serve to save 
 their favourite when the day of reckoning came. 
 
 Tiberius could hardly have shared in the general elation. To 
 make promises was one thing, to fulfil them another. Everything 
 depended on the effectiveness of the execution of the agrarian scheme ; 
 
 The titles borne by the commissioners appear as III vir a. d. a. {Lex Latina 
 Tabulae Bantinae, C. I. L. 1. 197 ; Bruns Pontes i. 3. 9 ; cf. Lex Acilia Repetundarum 
 1. 13, C. I. L. i. 198 ; Bruns Pontes i. 3. 10) : III vir a. i. a. (C. I. L. i. nn. 552-555) : 
 III vir a. d. a. i. (C. 1. L. i. n. 583). 
 
 1 Plut. Ti. Gracch. 13. = App. Bell. Civ. 1. 13. 
 
 3 Plut. l.c. 
 
133 B.C.] BEQUEST OF ATTALUS 129 
 
 and, although the mechanism for distribution was excellent, some 
 of the material necessary for its successful fulfilment was sadly lack- 
 ing. There were candidates enough for land, and there was sufficient 
 land for the candidates. But whence were the means for starting 
 these penniless people on their new road to virtue and prosperity 
 to be derived ? To give an ardent settler thirty jugera of soil and 
 to withhold from him the means of sowing his first crop or of mak- 
 ing his first effort to turn pasture into arable land, was both useless 
 and cruel ; and we may imagine that the evicted possessors had not 
 left their relinquished estates in a very enviable condition. The 
 doors of the Aerarium were closed, for its key was in the hands of 
 the senate ; and Gracchus had to cast an anxious eye around for 
 means for satisfying the needs of his clients. 
 
 The opportunity was presented when the Roman people came 
 into the unexpected inheritance of Attains the Third, king of Per- 
 gamon. The testament was brought to Rome by Eudemus the 
 Pergamene, whose first business was with the senate. But, when 
 Eudemus arrived in the city, he saw a state of things which must 
 have made him doubt whether the senate was any longer the true 
 director of the State. It sat passive and sullen, while an energetic 
 prostates of the Greek tjrpe was doing what he liked with the land 
 of Italy. No sane ambassador could have refused to neglect Grac- 
 chus, and it is practically certain that Eudemus approached him. 
 This fact we may believe, even if we do not accept the version that 
 the envoy had taken the precaution of bringing in his luggage a 
 purple robe and a diadem, as symbols that might be necessary for a 
 fitting recognition of Tiberius's future position.^ It is also possible 
 that suspicion of the rule of senators and capitalists may also have 
 prompted the Greek to attempt to discover whether a more toler- 
 able settlement might not be gained for his country through the 
 leader of the popular party. ^ We cannot say whether Gracchus 
 ever contemplated a policy with respect to the province as a whole. 
 His mind was probably full of his immediate needs. He saw in the 
 treasures of Attains more than an equivalent for the revenues 
 enclosed in the locked Aerarium, and he announced his intention 
 of promulgating a plebiscite that the money left by the king should 
 be assigned to the settlers provided for by his agrarian law.' It is 
 
 ' Plut. Tt. GroccA. 14. ^ Hitzsch Die Gracchen p. 315. 
 
 'Liv. Ep. Iviii Deinde, cum minus agri esset quam quod dividi posset sine 
 offensa etiam plebis, quoniam eos ad cupiditatem amplum modum sperandi incit- 
 
 9 
 
130 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 133 
 
 possible that he contemplated the application of the future revenues 
 of the kingdom of Pergamon to this or some similar purpose : and 
 it was perhaps partly for this reason, partly in answer to the objecT 
 tion that the treasure could not be appropriated without a senatorial 
 decree, that he announced the novel doctrine that it was no busi- 
 ness of the senate to decide the fate of the cities which had belonged 
 to the Attalid monarchy, and that he himself would prepare for the 
 people a measure dealing with this question.^ 
 
 This was the fiercest challenge that he had yet flung to the 
 senate. There might be a difference of opinion as to the right of 
 a magistrate to put a question to the people without the guidance 
 of a senatorial decree ; the assignment of land was unquestionably 
 a popular right in so far as it required ratification by the com- 
 mons ; even the deposition of Octavius was a matter for the people 
 and would avenge itself. But there were two senatorial rights — 
 the one usurped, the other created — whose validity had never been 
 questioned. These were the control of finance and the direction of 
 provincial administration. Were the possibility once admitted 
 that these might be dealt with in the Comitia, the magistrates 
 would cease to be ministers of the senate ; for it was chiefly 
 through a system of judicious prize-giving that the senate attached 
 to itself the loyalty of the oflScial class. There was perhaps less 
 fear of what Gracchus himself might do than of the spectre which 
 he was raising for the future. For in Roman history the events of 
 the past made those of the future ; there were few isolated pheno- 
 mena in its development. 
 
 From this time the attacks of individual senators on Gracchus 
 became more vehement and direct. They proceeded from men of 
 the highest rank. A certain Pompeius, in whom we may probably 
 see an ex-consul and a future censor, was not ashamed of raising 
 the spectre of a coming monarchy by reference to the story 
 of the sceptre and the purple robe, and is said to have vowed 
 to impeach Gracchus as soon as his year of magistracy had ex- 
 pired ; ^ the ex-consul Quintus Caecilius Metellus, of Macedonian 
 fame, reproached Tiberius with his rabble escort. He compared 
 
 averat, legem se promulgaturum ostendit, ut iis, qui Sempronia lege agrum accipere 
 deberent, pecunia quae regis Attali fuisset divideretur. [Victor] de Vir. III. 64 
 Tulit ut ea familia quae ex Attali hereditate erat ageretur et populo divideretur, 
 Cf. Plut. Ti. Gracch. 14; Oros. v. 8. 4. 
 
 1 Plut. Ti. Gracch. 14. 2 /jf^_ . Qros. v. 8. 4, 
 
133 B.C.] ATTACKS ON TIBERIUS GRACCHUS 131 
 
 the demeanour of the father and the son. In the censorship of the 
 former the citizens used to quench their lights at night, as they saw 
 him pass up the street to his house, that they might impress the 
 censorial mind with the ideas of early hours and orderly conduct ; 
 now the son of this man might be seen returning home amidst the 
 blaze of torches, held in the stout arms of a defiant body-guard 
 drawn from the neediest classes.^ These arrows may have missed 
 the mark ; the one that hit was winged by an aged senator, Titus 
 Annius Luscus, who had held the consulship twenty years before. 
 His wit is said to have been better established than his character. 
 He excelled in that form of ready altercation, of impaling his 
 opponent on the horns of a dilemma by means of some innocent 
 question, which, both in the courts and the senate, was often more 
 effective than the power of continuous oratory. He now challenged 
 Tiberius to a wager (sponsio), such as in the public life of Rome 
 was often employed to settle a disputed point of honour or of fact, 
 to determine the question whether he had dishonoured a colleague, 
 who was holy in virtue of his office and had been made sacrosanct 
 by the laws. The proposal was received by the senators with loud 
 cries of acclamation. A glance at Tiberius would probably have 
 shown that Annius had found the weak spot, not merely in his de- 
 fensive armour, but in his very soul. The deposition of Octavius 
 was proving a very nemesis ; it was a democratic act that was in 
 the highest degree undemocratic, an assertion and yet a gross 
 violation of popular liberty.'^ The superstitious masses were in the 
 habit of washing their hands and purifying their bodies before they 
 entered into the presence of a tribune.* Might there not be a thrill 
 of awe and repentance when the idea was brought home to them 
 that this holy temple had been violated : and must not this be 
 followed by a sense of repugnance to the man who had prompted 
 them to the unhallowed deed .'' Tiberius sprang to his feet, quitted 
 the senate-house and summoned the people. The majesty of the 
 tribunate in his person had been outraged by Annius. He must 
 
 ' Plut. I.e. Cicero {Brut, 21. 81) speaks of a speech of Metellus "contra Ti. 
 Gracchum ". Plutarch's citation may be from this speech. 
 
 " Cicero regarded Octavius's deposition as the ruin of Gracchus. Brut. 25. 95 
 Injuria accepta fregit Ti. Gracchum patientia civis in rebus optimis constantissimus 
 M. Octavius. De Leg. iii. 10. 24 Ipsum Ti. Gracchum non solum neglectus sed 
 etiam sublatus intercessor evertit ; quid enim ilium aliud perculit, nisi quod 
 potestatem intercedenti collegae abrogavit ? The deposition was an act of 
 "seditio" {pro Mil. 27. 72). 
 
 8 Plut. Quaest. Rom. § 81. 
 
132 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 133 
 
 answer for his words. The aged senator appeared before the 
 crowd ; he knew his disadvantage if the ordinary weapons of 
 comitial strife were employed. In power of words and in repute 
 with the masses he stood far behind Tiberius. But his presence of 
 mind did not desert him. Might he ask a few questions before the 
 regular proceedings began ? The request was allowed and there 
 was a dead silence. " Now suppose," said Annius, " you, Tiberius, 
 were to wish to cover me with shame and abuse, and suppose I were 
 to call on one of your colleagues for help, and he were to come up 
 here to offer me his assistance, and suppose further that this were 
 to excite your displeasure, would you deprive that colleague of 
 yours of his office ? " To answer that question in the affirmative 
 was to admit that the tribunician power was dead ; to answer it in 
 the negative was to invite the retort that the auxiliutn was only 
 one form of the intercessio. The quick-witted southern crowd 
 must have seen the difficulty at once, and Tiberius himself, usually 
 so ready and bold in speech, could not face the dilemma. He re- 
 mained silent and dismissed the assembly.^ 
 
 But matters could not remain as they were. This new aspect 
 of Octavius's deposition was the talk of the town, and there were 
 many troubled consciences amongst the members of his own fol- 
 lowing. Something must be done to quiet them ; he must raise 
 the question himself. The situation had indeed changed rapidly. 
 Tiberius Gracchus was on his defence. Never did his power of 
 special pleading appear to greater advantage than in the speech 
 which followed. He had the gift which makes the mighty Radical, 
 of diving down and seizing some fundamental truth of political 
 science, and then employing it with merciless logic for the illusti-a- 
 tion or refutation of the practice of the present. The central 
 idea here was one gathered from the political science of the 
 Greeks. The good of the community is the only test of the 
 Tightness of an institution. It is justified if it secures that end, 
 unjustified if it does not : or, to use the language of religion, holy 
 in the one case, devoid of sanctity in the other. And an institution 
 is not a mere abstraction ; we must judge it by its use. We must, 
 therefore, say that when it obeys the common interest, it is right : 
 when it ceases to obey it, it is wrong. But the right must be pre- 
 served and the wrong plucked out. So Gracchus maintained that 
 
 1 Plut. Ti. Gracch. 14. 
 
133 B.C.] DEFENCE OF OCTAVIUS'S DEPOSITION 133 
 
 the tribune was holy and sacrosanct because he had been sanctified 
 to the people's service and was the people's head. If then he change 
 his character and do the people wrong, cutting down its strength 
 and silencing its voice as expressed through the suffrage, he has 
 deprived himself of his office, for he has ceased to conform to the 
 terms on which he received it. Should we leave a tribune alone 
 who was pulling down the Capitolium or burning the docks ? And 
 yet a tribune who did these things would remain a tribune, though 
 a bad one. It is only when a tribune is destroying the power of 
 the people that he is no longer a tribune at all. The laws give 
 the tribune the power to arrest the consul. It is a power given 
 against a man elected by the people ; for consul and tribune are 
 equally mandataries of the people. Shall not then the people have 
 the right of depriving the tribune of his authority, when he uses this 
 authority in a way prej udicial to the interests of the giver ? What 
 does the history of the past teach us .'' Can anything have been 
 more powerful or more sacred than the ancient monarchy of Rome ? 
 The Imperium of the king was unlimited, the highest priestly 
 offices were his. Yet the city expelled Tarquin for his crimes. 
 The tyranny of a single man was alone sufficient to bring to an 
 end a government which had its roots in the most distant past, 
 which had presided over the very birth of the city. And, if 
 sanctity alone is to be the ground of immunity, what are we to 
 think of the punishment of a vestal virgin ? Is there anything in 
 Rome more holy and awe-inspiring than the maidens who tend 
 and guard the eternal flame .'' Yet their sin is visited by the most 
 horrible of deaths. They hold their sacrosanct character through 
 the gods ; they lose it, therefore, when they sin against the gods. 
 Should the same not be true of the tribune ? It is on account of 
 the people that he is sacred ; he cannot retain this divine character 
 when he wrongs the people ; he is a man engaged in destroying 
 the very power which is the source of his strength. If the tribunate 
 can justly be gained by a favourable vote of the majority of the 
 tribes, can it not with greater justice be taken away by an adverse 
 vote of all of them .'' Again, what should be the limits of our 
 action in dealing with sacred things ? Does sanctity mean im- 
 mobility.'' By no means. What are more holy and inviolable 
 than things dedicated to the gods ? Yet this character does not 
 prevent the people from handling, moving, transferring them 
 as it pleases. In the case of the tribunate, it is the office, not the 
 
184 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 138 
 
 man, that is inviolable ; it may be treated as an object of dedi- 
 cation and transferred to another. The practice of our own State 
 proves that the ofBce is not inviolable in the sense of being inalien- 
 able, for its holders have often forsworn it and asked to be divested 
 of iti 
 
 The strongest part of this utterance was that which dealt with 
 the sacred character of office ; it was a mere emanation from the per- 
 formance of certain functions ; the protection, not the reality, of the 
 thing. Gracchus might have added that even a treaty might under 
 certain circumstances be legitimately broken. The weakest, from 
 a Roman standpoint or indeed from that of any stable political 
 society, was the identification of the permanent and temporary 
 character of an institution, the assumption that a meeting of the 
 people was the people, that a tribune was the tribune. How far 
 the speech was convincing we do not know ; it certainly did not 
 relieve Tiberius of his embarrassments, which were now thickening 
 around him. 
 
 Tiberius's success had been mainly due to the country voters. 
 It is true that he had a large following in the city ; but this was 
 numerically inferior to a mass of urban folk, whose attitude was 
 either indifferent or hostile. They were indifferent in so far as they 
 did not want agrarian assignments, and hostile in so far as they 
 were clients of the noble houses which opposed Tiberius's policy. 
 This urban party was now in the ascendant, for the country voters 
 had scattered to their homes.^ The situation demanded that he 
 should work steadily for two objects, re-election to the tribunate 
 and the support of the city voters. If, ip addition to this support, 
 he could hold out hopes that would attract the great capitalists to 
 his side, his position would be impregnable. Hence in his speeches 
 he began to throw out hints of a new and wide progi'amme of legisla- 
 tion.^ There was fu-st the military grievance. Recent regulations, 
 by the large decrease which they made in the property qualifications 
 required for service,* had increased the liability to the conscription 
 of the manufacturing and trading classes of Rome. Gracchus pro- 
 
 1 Plut. Ti. Gracch. 15. » App. Bell. Civ. i. 14. 
 
 * Plut. Ti. Gracch, 16 o29ij (iWois v6iiou i,ve\dn$ai'e rh jrX^floj, rod re XP^""" 
 tSiv ffrpareLuf atpatpSitr^ Kol StSoifs cVt/caXctirdai rhv iriiiov wnh tuv SiKaa'Twi' Kol Tois 
 Kpivovai T(<T6 avyKK7]TiKois oiffi [rputKoaiois] KaTtt/iiyvi/s 4k tUv itnrewy rhy Xaov apt6fi6y, 
 Dio Cass. frg. 88 to Si/cao-T^pio iirh rfis $ovKtjs iirl rof/s iirTre'os juer^-ye (Cf. Plin. 
 H.N. xxxiii. 34). 
 
 * Polyb. vi. 19. 
 
133 B.C.] PROGRAMME OF TIBERIUS GRACCHUS 135 
 
 posed that the period of service should be shortened — his sugges- 
 tion probably being, not that the years of liability to service (the 
 seventeenth to the forty-sixth) should be lessened, but that within 
 these years a limited number of campaigns should be agreed on, 
 which should form the maximum amount of active service for every 
 citizen.^ Two other proposals dealt with the question of criminal 
 jurisdiction. The first allowed an appeal to the people from the 
 decision of judices. The form in which this proposal is stated 
 by our authority, would lead us to suppose that the courts to be 
 rendered appellable were those constituted under standing laws. 
 The chief of these quaestiones or judicia publica was the court 
 which tried cases for extortion, established in the first instance by 
 a Lex Calpurnia, and possibly reconstituted before this epoch by a 
 Junian law.^ A permanent court for the trial of murder may also 
 have existed at this time.' The judges of these standing com- 
 missions were drawn from the senatorial order ; and Gracchus, 
 therefore, by suggesting an appeal from their judgment to the 
 people, was attacking a senatorial monopoly of the most important 
 jurisdiction, and perhaps reflecting on the conduct of senatorial 
 judices, as displayed especially in relation to the grievances of 
 distressed provincials. But it is probable that he also meant to 
 strike a blow at a more extraordinary prerogative claimed by the 
 senate, and to deny the right of that body to establish special com- 
 missions which could decide without appeal on the life and fortunes 
 of Roman citizens.* So far his proposals, whether based on a con- 
 viction of their general utility or not, were a bid for the support of 
 the average citizen. But when he declared that the qualification 
 for the criminal judges of the time could not be allowed to stand, 
 and that these judges should be taken either from a joint panel of 
 senators and knights, or from the senate increased by the addition 
 of a number of members of the equestrian order equal to its present 
 strength, he was holding out a bait to the wealthy middle class, 
 
 ' There was already such a maximum according to Polybius (vi. ig). What it 
 precisely was, is uncertain, as the passage is corrupt. According to Lipsius's reading, 
 it was twenty years, according to Casaubon's, sixteen under ordinary conditions, 
 twenty in emergencies. The knights were required to serve ten campaigns. See 
 Marquardt Staatsverw. ii. p. 381. The nature of the reduction proposed by 
 Gracchus is unknown. 
 
 ''Lex Acilia 11. 23 and 74. ' Cic. de Fin. ii. 16. 54. 
 
 * No mention is made of the appeal in five cases in which criminal commissions 
 had been established by the senate. The dates of these commissions are B.C. 331 
 (Liv. viii. 18 ; Val. Max. ii. 5. 3), 314 (Liv. ix. 26), 186 (Liv. xxxix. 8-19), 184 (Liv. 
 xxxix. 41) and 180 (Liv. xl. 37). 
 
136 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 133 
 
 who were perhaps already beginning to feel senatorial jurisdiction 
 in provincial matters irksome and disadvantageous to their interests. 
 We are told by one authority that Gracchus's eyes even ranged 
 beyond the citizen body and that he contemplated the possibility 
 of the gift of citizenship to the whole of Italy.^ This, was not in 
 itself a measure likely to aid in his salvation by the people ; if it 
 was not a disinterested effort of far-sighted genius, it may have 
 been due to the gathering storm which his experience showed him 
 the agrarian commission would soon be forced to meet.^ Certainly, 
 if all these schemes are rightly attributed to Tiberius Gracchus, it 
 was he more than any man who projected the great programme of 
 reform that the future had in store. 
 
 Unfortunately for Gracchus the time was short for nursing a 
 new constituency or spreading a new ideal. The time for the 
 tribunician elections was approaching, an active canvass was being 
 carried on by the candidates, and the aggrieved landowners were 
 throwing the whole weight of their influence into the opposite 
 scale.^ Wild rumours of his plans were being circulated. The 
 family clique that filled the agrarian commission was to snatch at 
 other offices ; Gracchus's brother, a youth still unqualified even for 
 the quaestorship,* was to be thrust into the tribunate, and his 
 father-in-law Appius was destined for the consulate.^ Rome was 
 to be ruled by a dynasty, and the tyranny of the commission was 
 to extend to every department of the State. Gracchus felt that 
 the city-combination against him was too strong, and sent an earnest 
 summons to his supporters in the country. But practical needs 
 were stronger than gratitude; the farmers were busy with their 
 harvest; and it was plain that on this occasion the man of the 
 street was to have the decisive voice. The result showed that even 
 he was not unmoved by Gracchus's services, and by his last appeal 
 that a life risked on behalf of the people should be protected by a 
 renewed investiture with the tribunate." 
 
 1 Vellei. ii. 2 (Tiberius Gracchus) pollicitus toti Italiae civitatem. 
 
 2 Cicero is perhaps stating the result, rather than the intention, of the Gracchan 
 legislation when he says (de Rep. iii. 29. 41) Ti. Gracchus perseveravit in civibus, 
 sociorum nominisque Latini jura neglexit ac foedera. No point in the Gracchan 
 agrarian law is more remarkable than its strict, perhaps inequitable, legality. That 
 Its author consciously violated treaty relations is improbable. 
 
 ' App. Bell. Civ. i. 14. 
 
 * For the qualifications at this period see Mommsen Staatsr. i. p. 505. 
 » Dio Cass. frg. 88 iir^x^lfmaf ko! h rb iitiiiv ?tos ^€tA toC oSeAd>o5 SjjuopvSiroi 
 kb! Tbv TrevBfphv Sirarov aroSe^ai. 
 *App. I.e. 
 
133 B.C.] GRACCHtrS'S ATTEMPT AT RE-ELECTION 137 
 
 The day of the election arrived and the votes were taken. 
 When they came to be read out, it was found that the two first 
 tribes had given their voice for Gracchus. Then there was a sudden 
 uproar. The votes were going against the landlords ; a legal pro- 
 test must be made. Men rose in the assembly, and shouted out 
 that immediate re-election to the tribunate was forbidden by the 
 law. They were probably both right and wrong in their protest, 
 as men so often were who ventured to make a definite assertion 
 about the fluid public law of Rome. There was apparently no 
 enactment forbidding the iteration of this office, and appointment 
 to the tribunate must have been governed by custom. But recent 
 custom seems to have been emphatically opposed to immediate re- 
 election, and the appeal was justified on grounds of public prac- 
 tice.^ It would probably have been disregarded, had the Gracchan 
 supporters been in an overwhelming majority, or Gracchus's col- 
 leagues unanimous in their support. But the people were divided, 
 and the president was not enthusiastic enough in the cause to risk 
 his future impeachment. Rubrius, to whom the lot had assigned 
 the conduct of the proceedings on that day, hesitated as to the 
 course which he ought to follow. A bolder spirit Mummius, the 
 man who had been made by the deposition of Octavius, asked that the 
 conduct of the assembly should be handed over to him. Rubrius, 
 glad to escape the difficulty, willingly yielded his place ; but now 
 the other members of the college interposed. The forms of the 
 Comitia were being violated ; a president could not be chosen 
 without the use of the lot. The resignation of Rubrius must be 
 followed by another appeal to sortition. The point of order raised, 
 as usual, a heated discussion ; the tribunes gathered on the Rostra 
 to argue the matter out. Nothing could be gained by keeping the 
 people as the spectators of such a scene, and Gracchus succeeded in 
 getting the proceedings adjourned to the following day.^ 
 
 The situation was becoming more desperate ; for each delay 
 was a triumph for the opposition, and could only strengthen the 
 belief in the illegality of Gracchus's claim. He now resorted to the 
 last device of the Roman ; he ceased to be a protector and became a 
 suppliant. Although still a magistrate, he assumed the garb of 
 
 > Mommsen Staatsr. i. p. 523. Dio Cassius indeed says (fr. 22) kuKvBcv t6 tivu 
 Sh T^v ipxh" A-o/ilSiiveu/ ; but tradition held that the proviso had been violated in the 
 early plebeian agitations. 
 
 "App. Bell. Civ. 1. 14. 
 
138 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. ISS 
 
 mourning, and with humbled and tearful mien begged the help of 
 individuals in the market place.^ He led his son by the hand ; his 
 children and their mother were to be wards of the people, for he 
 had despaired of his own life. Many were touched ; to some the 
 tribunate of Gracchus seemed like a rift in a dark cloud of oppres- 
 sion which would close around them at his fall, and their- hearts 
 sank at the thought of a renewed triumph of the nobility. Others 
 were moved chiefly by the fears and sufferings of Gracchus. Cries 
 of sympathy and defiance were raised in answer to his tears, and a 
 large crowd escorted him to his house at nightfall and bade him be 
 confident of their support on the following day. During his 
 appeals he had hinted at the fear of a nocturnal attack by his 
 foes : and this led many to form an encampment round his house 
 and to remain as its vigilant defenders throughout the night.^ 
 
 Before day-break he was up and engaged in hasty colloquy with 
 his friends. The fear of force was certainly present ; and definite 
 plans may have been now made for its repulsion. Some even be- 
 lieved that a signal for battle was agreed on by Gracchus, if matters 
 should come to that extreme.^ With a true Roman's scruples he 
 took the omens before he left his house. They presaged ill. The 
 keeper of the sacred chickens, which Gracchus's Imperium now per- 
 mitted him to consult, could get nothing from the birds, even 
 though he shook the cage. Only one of the fowls advanced, and 
 even that would not touch the food. And the unsought omens 
 were as evil as those invited. Snakes were found to have hatched 
 a brood in his helmet, his foot stumbled on the threshold with such 
 violence that blood flowed from his sandal ; he had hardly advanced 
 on his way when crows were seen struggling on his left, and the 
 true object of the sign was pointed when a stone, dislodged by one 
 of them from a roof, fell at his own feet. This concourse of ill-luck 
 frightened his boldest comrades; but his old teacher, Blossius of 
 Cumae, vehemently urged the prosecution of the task. Was a son of 
 Gracchus, the grandson of Africanus, chief minister of the Roman 
 people,* to be deterred by a crow from listening to the summons of 
 the citizens .'' If the disgrace of his absence amused his enemies, they 
 
 ^App. I.e.; Plut. Ti. Gracch. 13. The scene is thus described by Asellio (a 
 contemporary) : — Orare coepit, id quidem ut se defenderent liberosque suos, eumque, 
 quem virile secus turn in eo tempore habebat, produci jussit populoque commendavit 
 prope flens (Gell. ii. 13. 5). Appian also speaks of a son, Plutarch of children. 
 
 2 Plut. Ti. Gracch. 16. 'App. Bell. Civ. i. 15. 
 
 * irpotTTiiTris Sk tou "Pufiaiar Siifiov (Plut. Ti. Gracch. 17). 
 
133 B.C.] RIOT AT THE ELECTION 139 
 
 would keep their laughter to themselves. They would use that 
 absence seriously, to denounce him to the people as a king who was 
 already aping the luxury of the t3rrant. As Blossius spoke, men were 
 seen running from the direction of the Capitol ; they came up, they 
 bade him press on, as all was going well. And, in fact, it seemed 
 as if all might turn out brightly. The Capitoline temple, and the 
 level area before it, which was to be the scene of the voting, were 
 filled with his supporters. A hearty cheer greeted him as he ap- 
 peared, and a phalanx closed round him to prevent the approach 
 of any hostile element. Shortly after the proceedings began, the 
 senate was summoned by the consul to meet in the temple of Fides. ^ 
 A few yards of sloping ground was all that now separated the two 
 hostile camps.^ 
 
 The interval for reflection had strengthened the belief of some 
 of the tribunes that Gracchus's candidature was illegal, and they 
 were ready to support the renewed protests of the rich. The elec- 
 tion, however, began ; for the faithful Mummius was now presiding, 
 and he proceeded to call on the tribes to vote. But the business 
 of filing into their separate compartments, always complicated, was 
 now impossible. The fringe of the crowd was in a continual up- 
 roar; from its extremities the opponents of the measure were 
 wedging their way in. As his supporters squared their shoulders, 
 the whole mass rocked and swayed. There was no hope of eliciting 
 a decision from this scuffling and pushing throng. Every moment 
 brought the assembly nearer to open riot. Suddenly a man was 
 seen at some distance from Tiberius gesticulating with his hand as 
 though he had something to impart. He was recognised as Fulvius 
 Flaccus, a senator, a man perhaps already known as a sympathiser 
 with schemes of reform. Gracchus asked the crowd immediately 
 around him to give way a little, and Fulvius fought his way up to 
 the tribune. His news was that in the sitting of the senate the 
 rich proprietors had asked the consul to use force, that he had de- 
 clined, and that now they were preparing on their own motion to 
 slay Tiberius. For this purpose they had collected a large band of 
 armed slaves and retainers.^ Tiberius immediately imparted the 
 news to his friends. Preparations for defence were hastily made : 
 an improvised body-guard was formed ; togas were girt up, and the 
 staves of the lictors were broken into fragments to serve as clubs. 
 
 ' App. Bell. Civ. i, i6. ^ Richter Topographie p. ia8. 
 
 ' Plut. Ti. Gracch. i8. 
 
140 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 138 
 
 The Gracchans more distant from the centre of the scene were 
 meanwhile marveUing at the strange preparations of which they 
 caught but glimpses, and could be seen asking eager questions as to 
 their meaning. To reach these distant supporters by his voice was 
 impossible ; Tiberius could but touch his forehead with his hand 
 to indicate that his life was in danger. Immediately a shout went 
 up from the opposite side " Tiberius is asking for the diadem," and 
 eager messengers sped with the news to the senate. "^ There was 
 probably a knowledge that physical support for their cause would 
 be found in that quarter, and the exodus of these excited capitalists 
 was apparently assisted by an onslaught from the mob. A regular 
 tumult was brewing, and the tribunes, instead of striving to pre- 
 serve order, or staying to interpose their sacred persons between the 
 enraged combatants, fled incontinently from the spot. Their fear 
 was natural, for by remaining they might seem to be identifying 
 themselves with a cause that was either lost or lawless. With the 
 tribunes vanished the last trace of legality. The priests closed the 
 temple to keep its precincts from the mob. The more timorous of 
 the crowd fled in wild disorder, spreading wilder rumours. Tiberius 
 was deposing the remaining tribunes from office ; he was appoint- 
 ing himself to a further tribunate without the formalities of 
 election.^ 
 
 Meanwhile the senate was deliberating in the temple of Fides. 
 In the old days their deliberations might have resulted in the ap- 
 pointment of a dictator, and one of the historians who has handed 
 down the record of these facts marvels that this was not the case 
 now.' But the dictatorship had been weakened by submission to 
 the appeal, and long before it became extinct had lost its signifi- 
 cance as a means of repressing sedition within the city. The Roman 
 constitution had now no mechanism for declaring a state of siege 
 or martial law. PYom one point of view the extinction of the 
 dictatorship was to be regretted. The nomination of this magis- 
 trate would have involved at least a day's delay ; * some further 
 time would have been necessary before he had collected round him a 
 sufficient force in a city which had neither police nor soldiers. Had 
 it been decided to appoint a dictator, the outrages of the next hour 
 could never have occurred. As things were, it seemed as though 
 
 1 Plut, Ti. Gracch. 19. '^ App. Bell. Civ. i. 15. '^ Ihid. 16. 
 
 * The dictator was usually nominated by the consul between midnight and 
 morning (Liv. viii. 23), for the purpose of the avoidance of unfavourable omens. 
 
133 B.C.] ATTACK BY SENATORS 141 
 
 the senate had to choose between impotence and murder. There 
 was indeed another way. Such was the respect for members of the 
 senatorial order, that a deputation of that body, headed by the 
 consul, would probably have led to the dispersal of the mob. But 
 passions were inflamed and it was no time for peaceful counsels. 
 The advocate of summary measures was the impetuous Nasica. He 
 urged the consul to save the city and to put down the tyrant. He 
 demanded that the sense of the house should be taken as to whether 
 extreme measures were now necessary. Even at this time a tradi- 
 tion may have existed that a magic formula by which the senate 
 advised the magistrates " to see to it that the State took no harm," ' 
 could justify any act of violence in an emergency. The sense of 
 the house was with Nasica, but a resolution could not be framed 
 unless the consul put the question. The answer of Scaevola was 
 that of a lawyer. He would commence no act of violence, he 
 would put to death no citizen uncondemned. If, however, the 
 people, through the persuasion or compulsion of Tiberius, should 
 come to any illegal decision, he would see that such a resolution 
 was not observed. Nasica sprang to his feet. " The consul is be- 
 traying the city ; those who wish the salvation of the laws, follow 
 me." ^ With this he drew the hem of his toga over his head,' and 
 rushed from the door in the direction of the Capitoline temple. 
 He was followed by a crowd of senators, all wrapping the folds of 
 their togas round their left arms. Outside the door they were 
 joined by their retainers armed with clubs and staves.* 
 
 Meanwhile the proceedings in the Area Capitolii had been be- 
 coming somewhat less turbulent. The turmoU had quieted down 
 
 1 Tradition ultimately carried it back to the fourth century B.C. In the re- 
 volution threatened by Manlius Capitolinus (384 e.g., Liv. vi. 19) the phrase Ut 
 videant magistratus ne quid ... res publica detrimenti capiat was believed to 
 have been employed. 
 
 ^ Plut. Ti. Gracck. ig eirei . . . irpoMhwffiv 6 &pxo>v t^v 'jtSKiv, ol Pov\6fjievot 
 Tois vi/iois jSoijflEic &ia>\ov6€iT€. The most specific and juristically exact account of 
 these proceedings (one probably drawn from Livy) is preserved by Valerius 
 Maximus (iii. 2. 17) : — In aedem Fidei publicae convocati patres conscripti a 
 consuls Mucio Scaevola quidnam in tali tempestate faciendum esset deliberabant, 
 cunctisque censentibus ut consul armis rem publicam tueretur, Scaevola negavit se 
 quicquam vi esse acturum. Tum Scipio Nasica Quoniam, inquit, consul dum juris 
 ordinem sequitur id agit ut cum omnibus legibus Romanum imperium corruat, egomet 
 me privatus voluntati vestrae ducem offero. . . . Qui rem publicam salvam esse 
 volunt me sequantur. 
 
 ' App. Bell. Civ. i. 16 ; Plut. l.c. Appian speculates as to the meaning of 
 the act. It may have been meant to attract the attention of his supporters, it may 
 have been a signal of war, it may have been intended to veil the impending deed of 
 horror from the eyes of the gods. Cf. Vellei. ii. 3. 
 
 * Plut. Ti. Gracch. 19. 
 
142 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 133 
 
 with the exclusion of the more violent members of the opposition. 
 Gracchus had called a Contio, for the purpose, it was said, of 
 encouraging his supporters and asserting his own constancy and 
 defiance of senatorial authority. The gathering had become a 
 mere partisan mass meeting, such as had often been seen in the 
 course of the cun-ent year, and the herald was crying " Silence," ' 
 when suddenly the men on the outskirts of the throng fell back to 
 right and left. A long line of senators had been seen hastening up 
 the hill. A deputation from the fathers had come. That must 
 have been the first impression : and the crowd fell back before its 
 masters. But in a moment it was seen that the masters had come 
 to chastise, not to plead. With set faces and blazing eyes Nasica 
 and his following threw themselves on the yielding mass. The un- 
 armed senators snatched at the first weapons that lay to hand, the 
 fragments of the shattered furniture of the meeting, severed planks 
 and legs of benches, while their retinue pressed on with clubs and 
 sticks. The whole column made straight for Tiberius and his 
 improvised body-guard. Resistance was hopeless, and the tribune 
 and his friends turned to flee. But the idea of restoring order 
 occupied but a small place in the minds of the maddened senators. 
 The accumulated bitterness of a year found its outlet in one 
 moment of glorious vengeance. The fathers were behaving like 
 a Greek street mob of the lowest type which had turned against an 
 oppressive oligarchy. They were clubbing the Gracchans to death. 
 Tiberius was in flight when some one seized his toga. He slipped it 
 oif and fled, clad only in his tunic, when he stumbled over a pro- 
 strate body and fell. As he rose, a rain of blows descended on 
 his head.^ The man who was seen to strike the first blow is 
 said to have been Publius Saturius, one of his own colleagues. 
 The glory of his death was vehemently disputed ; one Rufus, 
 since he could not claim the first blow, is said to have boasted 
 of being the author of the second. Tiberius is said to have fallen 
 by the very doors of the Capitoline temple, not far from the 
 statues of the Kings.^ The number of his adherents that perished 
 was over three hundred, and it was noted that not one of these was 
 
 1 [Cic] ad Herenn. iv. 55. 68. 
 
 2 In the highly rhetorical exercise contained in [Cic] ad Herenn. iv. 55. 68 is to 
 be found the following picture :— Iste spumans ex ore scelus, anhelans ex infimo- 
 pectore crudelitatem, contorquet brachium et dubitanti Graccho quid e.ss,et, neque 
 tamen locum, in quo constiterat, relinquenti, percutit tempus. 
 
 8App. B«H. CJD. i. 16. ^ ": '^ 
 
1S3 B.C.] DEATH OF TIBERIUS GRACCHUS 143 
 
 slain by the sword.^ Their bodies were thrown into the Tiber — not 
 by the mob but by the magistrates ; the hand of an aedile com- 
 mitted that of Tiberius to the stream.^ 
 
 The murder of a young man, who was still under thirty at the 
 time of his death,' and the slaughter of a few hundreds of his ad- 
 herents, may not seem to be an act of very great significance in the 
 history of a mighty empire. Yet ancient historians regarded the 
 event as epoch-marking, as the turning point in the history of 
 Rome, as the beginning of the period of the civil wars.* To justify 
 this conclusion it is not enough to point to the fact that this was 
 the first blood shed in civic discord since the age of the Kings ; ^ 
 for it might also have been the last. Though the vendetta is a natural 
 outgrowth of Italian soil, yet masses of men are seldom, like indi- 
 viduals, animated solely by the spirit of revenge. The blood of the 
 innocent is a good battle-cry in politics, but it is little more ; it is 
 far from being the mere pretext, but it is equally far from being 
 the true cause, of future revolution. Familiarity with the use of 
 force in civic strife is also a fatal cause of its perpetuation ; but 
 familiarity implies its renewed employment : it can hardly be the 
 result of the first experiment in murder. The repetition of this 
 ghastly phenomenon in Roman politics can only be accounted for 
 by the belief that the Gracchan imewte was of its very nature an 
 event that could not be isolated : that Gracchus was a pioneer in a 
 hostile country, and that his opponents preserved all their inherent 
 weakness after the first abortive manifestation of their pretended 
 strength. A bad government may be securely entrenched. The 
 senate, whether good or bad, had no defences at all. Its weakness 
 had in the old days been its pride. It ruled by influencing opinion. 
 Now that it had ceased to influence, it ruled by initiating a riot in 
 the streets. It had no military support except such as was given 
 it by friendly magistrates, and this was a dangerous weapon which 
 
 1 Plut. Ti. Gracch. 19. 
 
 '^ App. Bell. Civ. i. 16 koI irivras airohs vvKrhs i^ippi^av h rb ^Ev/ia toS irora/ioC. 
 [Victor] de Vir. III. 64 (Gracchi) corpus Lucretii aedilis manu in Tiberira missum ; 
 unde ille Vespillo dictus. 
 
 ' Plut. C. Gracck. i. 
 
 *Vellei. ii. 3. 3 Hoc initium in urbe Roma civilis sanguinis gladiorumque im- 
 punitatis ftiit. Inde jus vi obrutum potentiorque habitus prior, discordiaeque civium 
 antea condicionibus sanari solitae ferro dijudicatae (cf. Plut. Ti. Gracch. 20 ; App. 
 Bell. Civ. i. 17). Cic. de Rep. i. 19. 31 Mors Tiberii Gracchi et jam ante tota illius 
 ratio tribunatus divisit populum unum in duas partes. 
 
 ■-''Plut. Ti. Gracch. 20 rairriv irpdniiv laropovinv iv 'Pdi/iri arciaiv, ip' oi rh 
 Pff(r^\fie!^9lU KareXvira)', al/iart Kal ip6v(f iroKiTuy SiaicpiSrivai, 
 
144 A HISTORY OF ROME .- [B.C. 133 
 
 it hesitated to use. To ignore militarism was to be at the mercy of 
 the demagogue of the street, to admit it was found subsequently to 
 be equivalent to being at the mercy of the demagogue of the camp. 
 In either case authority must be maintained at the cost of civil 
 war. But the material helplessness of the senate was only one 
 factor in the problem. More fatal flaws were its lack of insight to 
 discover that there were new problems to be faced, and lack of courage 
 in facing them. This moral helplessness was due partly to the 
 selfishness of individuals, but partly also to the fixity of political 
 tradition. In spite of the brilliancy and culture of some of its 
 members, the senate in its corporate capacity showed the possession 
 of a narrow heart and an inexpansive intelligence. Its sjonpathies 
 were limited to a class ; it learnt its new lessons slowly and did not 
 see their bearing on the studies of the future. Imperialism abroad 
 and social contentment at home might be preserved by the old 
 methods which had worked so well in the past. But to the mind 
 of the masses the past did not exist, and to the mind of the re- 
 former it had buried its dead. The career of Tiberius Gracchus 
 was the first sign of a great awakening; and if we regard it as 
 illogical, and indeed impossible, to pause here and estimate the 
 character of his reforms, it is because the more finished work of his 
 brother was the completion of his efforts and followed them as 
 inexorably as the daylight follows the dawn. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE attitude of the senate after the fall of Gracchus was not 
 that of a combatant who had emerged secure from the 
 throes of a great crisis. A less experienced victor would 
 have dwelt on the magnitude of the movement and been guilty of 
 an attempt at its sudden reversal. But the government pretended 
 that there had been no revolution, merely an ^meute. The wicked 
 authors of the sedition must be punished ; but the Gracchan legis- 
 lation might remain untouched. More than one motive probably con- 
 tributed to shape this view. In the first place, the traditional policy 
 of Rome regarded reaction as equivalent to revolution. A rash move 
 should be stopped in its inception ; but, had it gone a little way and 
 yielded fruit in the shape of some permanent organisation, it would 
 be well to accept and, if possible, to weaken this product ; it would be 
 the height of rashness to attempt its destruction. The recognition 
 of the fait accompli had built up the Roman Empire, and the 
 dreaded consequences had not come. Why should not the same be 
 true of a new twist in domestic policy ? Secondly, the opposition 
 of the senate to Gracchus's reforms was based far more decidedly 
 on political than on economic grounds. The frenzy which seized 
 the fathers during the closing act of the tribune's life, was excited 
 by his comprehensive onslaught on their monopoly of provincial, 
 fiscal and judicial administration. His attempt to annex their 
 lands had aroused the resentment of individuals, but not the hatred 
 of a corporation. The individual was always lost in the senate, 
 and the wrongs of the landowner could be ignored for the moment 
 and their remedy left to time, if political prudence dictated a middle 
 course. Again, reflection may have suggested the thought whether 
 these wrongs were after all so great or so irremediable. The pas- 
 toral wealth of Italy was much ; but it was little compared with 
 10 (145) 
 
146 A History of rome tB.c. iss 
 
 the possibilities of enterprise in the provinces. Might not the bait 
 of an agrarian law, whose chances of success were doubtful and 
 whose operation might in time be impeded by craftily devised 
 legislation, lull the people into -an acceptance of that senatorial 
 control of the foreign world, which had been so scandalously 
 threatened by Gracchus ? There was a danger in the very raising 
 of this question ; there was further danger in its renewal. A 
 party cry seldom becomes extinct ; but its successful revival demands 
 the sense of some tangible grievance. To remove the grievance 
 was to silence the demagogue ; what the people wanted was com- 
 fort and not power. And lastly, the senate was not wholly com- 
 posed of selfish or aggrieved land-holders. Amongst the sternest 
 upholders of its traditions there were probably many who were 
 immensely relieved that the troublesome land question had received 
 some approach to a solution. There are always men hide-bound 
 by convention and unwilling to move hand or foot in aid of a 
 remedial measure, who are yet profoundly grateful tp the agitator 
 whom they revile, and profoundly thankful that the antics which 
 they deem grotesque, have saved themselves from responsibility and 
 their country from a danger. 
 
 It was with such mixed feelings that the senate viewed the 
 Gracchan d6bdole. It was impossible, however, to accept the situa- 
 tion in its entirety ; for to recognise the whole of Gracchus's career 
 as legitimate was to set a dangerous precedent for the future. The 
 large army of the respectable, the bulwark of senatorial power, had 
 not been sufficiently alarmed. It was necessary to emphasise the 
 fact that there had been an outrageous sedition on the part of the 
 lower classes. With this object the senate commanded that the 
 new consuls Popillius and Rupilius should sit as a criminal commis- 
 sion for the purpose of investigating the circumstances of the 
 outbreak.! The commission was empowered to impose any sentence, 
 and it is practically certain that it judged without appeal. The 
 consuls, as usual, exercised their own discretion in the choice of 
 assessors. The extreme party was represented by Nasica. Laelius, 
 who also occupied a place on the judgment-seat, might have been 
 regarded as a moderate ; = although, as popular sedition and not 
 
 1 Sail. jfug. 31. 7 Occiso Ti. Graccho, quem regnum parare aiebant, in plebera 
 Romanam quaestiones habitae sunt. Val. Max. iv. 7. i Cum senatus Rupilio et 
 Laenati consuhbus mandasset ut in eos, qui cum Graccho consenserant, more 
 majorum animadverterent ... Cf. Vellei. ii. 7. 4. 
 
 ' Cic. de Antic. 11. 37. 
 
133 B.C.1 PUNISHMENT OF THE GRACCHANS 147 
 
 the agrarian question was on its trial, there is no reason to suppose 
 that a member of the Scipionic circle would be less severe than any 
 of his colleagues in his animadversions on the wretched underlings 
 of the Gracchan movement whom it was his duty to convict of 
 crime. It was in fact the street cohort of Tiberius, men whose 
 voices, torches and sticks had so long insulted the feelings of re- 
 pectable citizens, that seems to have been now visited with the 
 penalties for high treason ; for no illustrious name is found amongst 
 the victims of the commission. On some the ban of interdiction 
 was pronounced, on others the death penalty was summarily in- 
 flicted. Amongst the slain was Diophanes the rhetor; and one 
 Caius Villius, by some mysterious eflbrt of interpretation which 
 baffles our analysis, was doomed to the parricide's death of the 
 serpent and the sack.^ Blossius of Cumae was also arraigned, and 
 his answer to the commission was subsequently regarded as expres- 
 sing the deepest villainy and the most exalted devotion. His only 
 defence was his attachment to Gracchus, which made the tribune's 
 word his law. " But what," said Laelius " if he had willed that 
 you should fire the Capitol .'' " " That would never have been the 
 will of Gracchus," was the reply, " but had he willed it, I should 
 have obeyed." ^ Blossius escaped the immediate danger, but his 
 fears soon led him to leave Rome, and now an exile from his 
 adopted as well as from his parent state, he could find no hope but 
 in the fortunes of Aristonicus, who was bravely battling with the 
 Romans in Asia. On the collapse of that prince's power he put 
 himself to death.^ 
 
 The government may have succeeded in its immediate object of 
 proving itself an effective policeman. The sense of order may have 
 been satisfied, and the spirit of turbulence, if it existed, may have 
 been for the moment cowed. But the memory of the central act 
 of the ghastly tragedy on the Capitoline hill could not be so easily 
 obliterated, and the chief actor was everywhere received with low- 
 ered brows and ill-omened cries.* It was superstition as well as 
 hatred that sharpened the popular feeling against Nasica. A man 
 was walking the streets of Rome whose hands were stained by a tri- 
 bune's blood. He polluted the city wherein he dwelt and the pre- 
 sence of all who met him. The convenient theory that a mere 
 
 1 Plut. Ti. Gracch. 20. 
 
 " Cic. de Amic. 11. 37 ; Val. Max. iv. 7. i. 
 
 ' Plut. Ti. Gracch. ao. * Ibid. 21. 
 
148 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 182 
 
 street riot had been suppressed might have been accepted but for 
 the awkward fact that the sanctity of the tribunate had been 
 trodden under foot by its would-be vindicators. A prosecution of 
 Nasica was threatened; and in such a case might not the argu- 
 ments that vindicated Octavius be the doom of the accused? 
 Popular hatred finds a convenient focus in a single man ; it is easier 
 to loathe an individual than a group. But for this very reason the 
 removal of the individual may appease the resentment that the group 
 deserves. Nasica was an embarrassment to the senate and he might 
 prove a convenient scapegoat. It was desirable that he should be 
 at once rewarded and removed ; and the opportunity for an honour- 
 able banishment was easily found. The impending war with Aris- 
 tonicus necessitated the sending of a commission to Asia, and Nasica 
 was included amongst the five members of this embassy.^ There 
 was honour in the possession of such a post and wealth to be gained 
 by its tenure ; but the aristocracy had eventually to pay a still 
 higher price for keeping Nasica beyond the borders of Italy. When 
 the chief pontificate was vacated by the fall of Crassus in 130 b.c, 
 the refugee was invested with the office so ardently sought by the 
 nobles of Rome.^ He was forced to be contented with this shadow 
 of a splendid prize, for he was destined never to exercise the high 
 functions of his office in the city. He seems never to have left Asia 
 and, after a restless change of residence, he died near the city of 
 Pergamon.^ 
 
 The permanence of the land commission was the most import- 
 ant result of the senate's determination to detach the political 
 from the economic consequences of the Gracchan movement.* 
 But they tolerated rather than accepted it. Had they wished 
 to make it their own, every nerve would have been strained 
 to secure the three places at the annual elections ^ for men who re- 
 
 1 Val. Max. v. 3. 2 e Is quoque (Scipio Nasica) propter iniquissimam virtutum 
 suarum apud cives aestimationem sub titulo legationis Pergamum secessit et quod 
 vitae superfuit ibi sine ullo ingratae patriae desiderio peregit. C/. Plut. I.e. ; Strabo 
 xiv. I. 38. See Waddington Pastes p. 662. 
 
 ^Vellei. ii. 3. i P. Scipio Nasica . . . ob eas virtutes primus omnium absens 
 pontifex maximus factus est. The other view, that Nasica was already pontifex 
 maximus before his exile, was widely prevalent and is stated by nearly all our 
 authorities (Cic. in Cat. i. i. 3 ; Val. Max. 1. 4. i ; Plut. Ti. Gracch. 21 ; App. Bell. 
 Civ. i. 16). 
 
 s Plut. l.c. 
 
 *Val. Max. vii. 2. 6 Par ilia sapientia senatus. Ti. Gracchum tribunum pi. 
 agrariam legem promulgare ausum morte multavit. Idem ut secundum legem ejus 
 per triumviros ager populo viritim divideretur egregie censuit. 
 
 "See p. ri6. 
 
132-130 B.C.] THE LAND COMMISSION 149 
 
 presented the true spirit of the nobility. But there was every 
 reason for allowing the people's representatives to continue the 
 people's work. The commission was an experiment, and the 
 government did not wish to participate in possible failure ; a 
 seetsonable opportunity might arise for suspending or neutralising 
 its activities, and the senate did not wish to reverse its own work ; 
 whether success or failure attended its operations, the task of the 
 commissioners was sure to arouse fears and excite odium, especially 
 amongst the Italian allies ; and the nobility were less inclined to 
 excite such sentiments than to turn them to account. So the 
 people were allowed year after year to perpetuate the Gracchan 
 clique and to replace its members by avowed sympathisers with 
 programmes of reform. Tiberius's place was filled by Crassus, 
 whose daughter Licinia was wedded to Caius Gracchus. ^ Two 
 places were soon vacated by the fall of Crassus in Asia and the 
 death of Appius Claudius. They were filled by Mai-cus Fulvius 
 Flaccus and Gains Papirius Carbo.^ The former had already 
 proved his sympathy with Gracchus, the latter had just brought to 
 an end an agitating tribunate, which had produced a successful 
 ballot law and an abortive attempt to render the tribune re- 
 eUgible. The personnel of the commission was, therefore, a guar- 
 antee of its good faith. Its energy was on a level with its 
 earnestness. The task of annexing and distributing the domain 
 land was strenuously undertaken, and other officials, on whom fell 
 the purely routine function of enforcing the new limit of occupa- 
 tion, seem to have been equally faithful to their work. Even the 
 consul Popillius, one of the presidents of the commission that tried 
 the Gracchan rioters, has left a record of his activity in the words 
 that he was " the first to expel shepherds from their domains and 
 install farmers in their stead ".^ The boundary stones of the com- 
 
 • Plut. Ti. Gracch. 21, C. I. L. i. n. 552 C. Sempionius Ti. F. Grac, Ap. 
 Claudius C. F. Pule, P. Licinius P. F. Crass. Ill vir. A. I. A. (C/. nn. 553. 1504), 
 n. 583 (82-81 B.C.) M. Terentius M. F. Varro Lucullus Pro Pr. terminos restituendos 
 ex s. c. coeravit qua P. Licinius Ap. Claudius C. Graccus III vir A. D. A. I. 
 statuerunt. These termini suggest the limites Graccani of the Liber Coloniarum 
 (Gromatici ed. Lachmann, pp. 209. 210) which may refer to the agrarian assign- 
 ments under the leges Semproniae (of Ti. and C. Gracchus) rather than to the 
 colonial foundations of the younger brother. 
 
 ^Liv. Ep. lix. Seditiones a triumviris Fulvio Flacco et C. Graccho et C. 
 Papirio Carbone agro dividendo creatis excitatae. App. Bell. Civ. i. 18. C. I. L. 
 i. n. 554 M. Folvios M. F. F/ac, C. Sempronius Ti. F. Grac, C. Paperius C. F. 
 Carb. Ill vire. A. I. A. (cf. ... 555). 
 
 'C. I. L. i. 551 (Wilmanns 797) Primus fecei ut de agro poplico aratoribus 
 c^derent paastores, 
 
150 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 132-129 
 
 missioners still survive to mark the care with which they defined 
 the limits of occupied land and of the new allotments ; and the 
 great increase in the census roll between the years 131 and 125 
 B.C. finds its best explanation in the steady increase of small land- 
 holders effected by the agrarian law. In the former year the 
 register had shown rather less than 319,000 citizens ; in the latter 
 the number had risen to somewhat more than 394,000.^ If this in- 
 crease of nearly 76,000 referred to the whole citizen body, it would 
 be difficult to connect it with the work of the commission, except 
 on the hypothesis that numerous vagrants, who did not as a rule 
 appear at the census, now presented themselves for assessment ; but, 
 when it is remembered that the published census list of Rome 
 merely contained the returns of her effective military strength, 
 and that this consisted merely of the assidui, it is clear that a 
 measure which elevated large portions of the capite censi to the 
 position of yeoman farmers must have had the effect of increasing 
 the numbers on the register ; and this sudden leap in the census 
 roll may thus be attributed to the successful working of the new 
 agrarian scheme.^ A result such as this could not have been wholly 
 transitory ; in tracing the agrarian legislation of the post- 
 Gracchan period we shall indeed find the trial of experiments which 
 prove that no final solution of the land question had been reached ; 
 we shall see the renewal of the process of land absorption which 
 again led to the formation of gigantic estates ; but these tendencies 
 may merely mark the inevitable weeding-out of the weaker of the 
 Gracchan colonists ; they do not prove that the sturdier folk failed 
 to justify the scheme, to work their new holdings at a profit, and to 
 hand them down to their posterity. It is true that the landless 
 proletariate of the city continued steadily to increase ; but the 
 causes which lead to the plethora of an imperial capital are too 
 numerous to permit us to explain this increase by the single 
 hypothesis of a renewed depopulation of the country districts. 
 
 The distribution of allotments, however, represented but the 
 simpler element of the scheme. The really arduous task was to 
 determine in any given case what land could with justice be dis- 
 tributed. The judicial powers of the triumvirs were taxed to the 
 
 1 Liv. Ep. lix. (131 B.C.) Censa sunt civium capita cccxvin milia dcccxxiii 
 praeter pupillos et viduas. lb. Ix. (125 B.C.) Censa sunt civium capita cccLXxxxiiil 
 milia dccxxvi. See de Boor Fasti Censorii. 
 
 ' Moramsen Hist, of Rome bk. iv. c. 3. 
 
132-129 B.C.] DIFFICULTIES OF LAND COMMISSION 151 
 
 utmost to determine what land was public, and what was private. 
 The possessors would at times make no accurate profession of their 
 tenure ; such as were made probably in many cases aroused distrust. 
 Information was invited from third parties, and straightway the 
 land courts were the scene of harrowing litigation.^ It could at 
 times be vaguely ascertained that, while a portion of some great 
 domain was held on occupation from the State, some other portion 
 had been acquired by purchase ; but what particular part of the 
 estate was held on either tenure was undiscoverable, for titles had 
 been lost, or, when preserved, did not furnish conclusive evidence of 
 the justice of the original transfer. Even the ascertainment of the 
 fact that a tract of land had once belonged to the State was no 
 conclusive proof that the State could still claim rights of ownership ; 
 for some of it had in early times been assigned in allotments, and 
 no historical record survived to prove where the assignment had 
 ended and the permission of occupation had begun. The holders 
 of private estates had for purposes of convenience worked the public 
 land immediately adjoining their own grounds, the original land- 
 marks had been swept away, and, although they had paid their 
 dues for the possession of so many acres, it was impossible to say 
 with precision which those acres were. The present condition of 
 the land was no index ; for some of the possessors had raised their 
 portion of the public domain to as high a pitch of cultivation as 
 their original patrimonies : and, as the commissioners were naturally 
 anxious to secure arable land in good condition for the new settlers, 
 ~the original occupiers sometimes found themselves in the enjoy- 
 ment of marsh or swamp or barren soil,^ which remained the sole 
 relics of their splendid possessions. The judgments of the court 
 were dissolving ancestral ties, destroying homesteads, and causing 
 the transference of household gods to distant dwellings. Such are 
 the inevitable results of an attempt to pry into ancient titles, and 
 to investigate claims the basis of which lies even a few decades from 
 the period of the inquisition. 
 
 But, while these consequences were unfortunate, they were not 
 likely to produce political complications so long as the grievances 
 were confined to members of the citizen body. The vested interests 
 which had been ignored in the passing of the measm-e might be 
 
 'App. Bell. Civ. i. i8 ay.(\oivTiDv S^ tSiv KiKrriiihuv avriiv (sc. r)iv y9iv) 
 iroypd^ea-eai, KaTriy6povs iiciipvTTov ivSemvivai. Kol tox" ir\^flos ^y Si/cSy x"^^'"""- 
 »App. i.e. 
 
152 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 132-129 
 
 brushed aside in its execution. Had the territory of Italy belonged 
 to Rome, there would have been much grumbling but no resistance ; 
 for effective resistance required a shadow of legal right. But be- 
 yond the citizen body lay groups of states which were interested in 
 varying degrees in the execution of the agrarian measure : and their 
 grievances, whether legitimate or not, raised embarrassing questions 
 of public law. The municipalities composed of Roman citizens or 
 of half-burgesses had, as we saw, been alarmed at the introduction 
 of the measure, perhaps through a misunderstanding of its import 
 and from a suspicion that the land which had been given them in 
 usufruct was to be resumed.^ Possibly the proceedings of the com- 
 mission may have done something to justify this fear, for the limits 
 of this land possessed by corporate bodies had probably become very 
 ill-defined in the course of years. But, although a corporate was 
 stronger than an individual interest and rested on some public 
 guarantee, the complaints of these townships, composed as they 
 were of burgesses, were merely part of the civic question, and must 
 have been negligible in comparison with the protests of the federate 
 cities of Italy and the Latins. We cannot determine what grounds 
 the Italian Socii had either for fear or protest. It is not certain 
 that land had been assigned to them in usufruct,^ and such portions 
 of their conquered territories as had been restored to them by the 
 Roman State were their own property. But, whether the territories 
 which they conceived to be threatened were owned or possessed by 
 these communities, such ownership or possession was guaranteed to 
 them by a sworn treaty, and it is inconceivable that the Gracchan 
 legislation, the strongest and the weakest point of which was its strict 
 legality, should have openly violated federative rights. When, how- 
 ever, we consider the way in which the public land of Rome ran in 
 and out of the territories of these allied communities, it is not 
 wonderful that doubts should exist as to the line of demarcation 
 between state territories and the Roman domain. Vexed questions 
 
 1 P. iig. 
 
 "Unless we take such to be the meaning of Hyginus {de Condic. Agr. p. ii6) 
 Vectigales autem agri sunt obligati, quidam r. p. P. R., quidam coloniarum aut 
 municipiorum aut civitatium aliquarum. Qui et ipsi plerique ad populum Romanum 
 pertinentes. . . . The passage seems to state that some agri which owed vectigal to 
 communities belonged to the Roman people. There might therefore be a fear of 
 their resumption, although it should have been remote, since these lands, as the 
 context shows, were dealt with by a system of lease (for its nature see Mitteis Zur 
 Gesch. der Erhpacht im Alterthum pp. 13 foil.), and leaseholds do not seem to have 
 been threatened by Gracchus. 
 
132-129 B.C.] OPPOSITION OF THE ITALIANS 153 
 
 of boundaries might everywhere be raised, and the government 
 of an Italian community would probably find as much difficulty 
 as a private possessor in furnishing documentary evidence of title. 
 The fears of the Latin communities are far more comprehensible, 
 and it was probably in these centres that the Italian revolt against 
 the proceedings of the commission chiefly originated. The interests 
 of the Latins in this matter were almost precisely similar to those 
 of the Romans : and this identity of view arose from a similarity of 
 status. The Latin colonies had had their territories assigned by 
 Roman commissioners: and it is probable, although it cannot be 
 proved, that doubts arose as to the legitimate extent of these assign- 
 ments in relation to the neighbouring public land. Many of these 
 territories may have grown mysteriously at the expense of Rome 
 in districts far removed from the capital : and in Gaul especially en- 
 croachments on the Roman domain by municipalities or individuals 
 of the Latin colonies most recently established may have been 
 suspected. But the Latin community had another interest in the 
 question, which bore a still closer resemblance to that shown by the 
 Roman burgesses. AaJJTpfndiyirl^ial T.^tir^ might be a recipient o£ 
 the fav our of the commissioner s, so he m ight be^ the victim of their 
 legaTcIaims. The fact that he shared the right of commerce with 
 Rome and could acquire and sue for land by Roman forms, makes 
 it practically certain that he could be a possessor of the Roman 
 domain.^ So eager had been the government in early times to see 
 waste land reclaimed and defended, that it could hardly have failed 
 to welcome the enterprising Latin who crossed his borders, threw 
 his energies into the cultivation of the public land, and paid the 
 required dues. Many of the wealthier members of Latin communi- 
 ties may thus have been liable to the- fate of the ejected possessors 
 of Rome ; but even those amongst them whose possessions did not 
 exceed the prescribed limit of five hundred jugera, may have believed 
 that their claims would receive, or had received, too little attention 
 from the Roman commission, while the difficulties resulting from 
 the fusion of public and private land in the same estates may have 
 been as great in these communities as they were in the territory of 
 Rome. Such grievances presented no feature of singularity ; they 
 were common to Italy, and one might have thought that a Latin 
 protest would have been weaker than a Roman. But there was 
 
 'P. 115. 
 
164 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 129 
 
 one vital point of difference between the two. The Roman could 
 appeal only as an individual ; the Latin appealed as a member of a 
 federate state. He did not pause to consider that his grievance 
 was due to his being half a Roman and enjoying Roman rights. 
 The truth that a suzerain cannot treat her subjects as badly as she 
 treats her citizens may be morally, but is not legally, a paradox. 
 The subjects have a collective voice, the citizens have ceased to 
 have one when their own government has turned against them. 
 The position of these Latins, illogical as it may have been, was 
 strengthened by the extreme length to which Rome had carried 
 her principle of non-interference in all dealings with federate allies. 
 The Roman Comitia did not legislate for such states, no Roman 
 magistrate had jurisdiction in their internal concerns. By a false 
 analogy it could easily be argued that no Roman commission should 
 be allowed to disturb their peaceful agricultural relations and to 
 produce a social revolution within their borders. The allies now 
 sought a champion for their cause, since the constitution supplied 
 no mechanism for the direct expression of Italian grievances. The 
 complaints of individual cities had in the past been borne to the 
 senate and voiced by the Roman patrons of these towns. Now 
 that a champion for the confederacy was needed, a common patron 
 had to be created. He was immediately found in Scipio Aemi- 
 lianus.i 
 
 The choice was inevitable and was dictated by three potent 
 considerations. There was the dignity of the man, recently raised 
 to its greatest height by the capture of Numantia ; there was his 
 known detachment from the recent Gracchan policy and his forcibly 
 expressed dislike of the means by which it had been carried through ; 
 there was the further conviction based on his recent utterances that 
 he had little liking for the Roman proletariate. The news of 
 Gracchus's fall had been brought to Scipio in the camp before 
 Numantia; his epitaph on the murdered tribune was that which 
 the stem Hellenic goddess of justice and truth breathes over the 
 slain Aegisthus : — 
 
 So perish all who do the like again.* 
 
 To Scipio Gracchus's undertaking must have seemed an act of im- 
 pudent folly, its conduct must have appeared something worse 
 than madness. In all probability it was not the agrarian move- 
 
 ^Afp. Bell. Civ. i. ig. ^P\\xi. Ti. Gracch. 21. Horn, Orf. i. 47. 
 
131 B.C.] ATTITUDE OF SCIPIO AEMILIANUS 155 
 
 ment which roused his righteous horror, but the gross violation of 
 the constitution which seemed to him to be involved in the inception 
 and consequences of the plan. Of all political temperaments that 
 of the Moderate is the least forgiving, just because it is the most 
 timorous. He sees the gulf that .yawns at his own feet, he lacks the 
 courage to take the leap, and sets up his own halting attitude, of 
 which he is secretly ashamed, as the correct demeanour for all 
 sensible and patriotic men. The Conservative can appreciate the 
 efforts of the Radical, for each is ennobled by the pursuit of the 
 impossible ; but the man of half measures and indeterminate aims, 
 while contemning both, will find the reaction from violent change 
 a more potent sentiment even than his disgust at corrupt immo- 
 bility. Probably Scipio had never entertained such a respect for 
 the Roman constitution as during those busy days in camp, when 
 the incidents of the blockade were varied by messages describing 
 the wild proceedings of his brother-in-law at Rome. Yet Scipio 
 must have known that an unreformed government could give 
 him nothing corresponding to his half-shaped ideals of a happy 
 peasantry, a disciplined and effective soldiery, an uncorrupt ad- 
 ministration that would deal honestly and gently with the pro- 
 vincials. His own position was in itself a strong condemnation of 
 the powers at Rome. They were relying for military efficiency on a 
 single man. Why should not they rely for political efficiency on 
 another.? But the latter question did not appeal to Scipio. To 
 tread the beaten path was not the way to make an army ; but it 
 was good enough for politics. 
 
 Scipio did not scorn the honours of a triumph, and the victory 
 of Numantia was followed by the usual pageant in the streets.^ He 
 was unquestionably the foremost man of Rome, and senate and 
 commons hung on his lips to catch some definite expression of his 
 attitude to recent events, or to those which were stirring men's 
 minds in the present. They had not long to wait, for a test was 
 soon presented. When in 131 Carbo introduced his bill per- 
 mitting re-election to the tribunate, all the resources of Scipio's 
 dignified oratory were at the disposal of the senate, and the 
 coalition of his admirers with the voters whom the senate could 
 dispose of, was fatal to the chances of the bill.^ Such an attitude 
 
 1 Cic. Pkil. xi. 8. i8 ; Liv. Ep. lix. ; Eutrop. iv. 19. 
 
 *Liv. Ep. lix. Cum Carbo tribunus plebis rogationem tulisset, ut eundem 
 tribunum plebi, quoties vellet, create liceret, rogationem ejus P, Africanus gravissima 
 
156 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 131 
 
 need not have weakened his popularity ; for excellent reasons could 
 be given, in the interest of popular government itself, against per- 
 mitting any magistracy to become continuous. But his political 
 enemies were on the watch, and in one of the debates on the measure 
 care was taken that a question should be put, the answer to which must 
 either identify or compromise him with the new radicalism. Carbo 
 asked him what he thought about the death of Tiberius Gracchus. 
 Scipio's answer was cautious but precise ; " If Gracchus had formed 
 the intention of seizing on the administration of the State, he had 
 been justly slain ". It was merely a restatement of the old constitu- 
 tional theory that one who aimed at monarchy was by that very 
 fact an outlaw. But the answer, hypothetical as was its expression, 
 implied a suspicion of Gracchus's aims. It did not please the crowd ; 
 there was a roar of dissent. Then Scipio lost his temper. The 
 contempt of the soldier for the civilian, of the Roman for the 
 foreigner, of the man of pure for the man of mixed blood — a con- 
 tempt inflamed to passion by the thought that men such as he 
 were often at the mercy of these wretches — broke through all 
 reserve. " I have never been frightened by the clamour of the 
 enemy in arms," he shouted, " shall I be alarmed by your cries, ye 
 step-sons of Italy .? " This reflection on the lineage of his audience 
 naturally aroused another protest. It was met by the sharp re- 
 joinder, " I brought you in chains to Rome ; you are freed now, but 
 none the more terrible for that ! " ^ It was a humiliating spectacle. 
 The most respected man in Rome was using the vulgar abuse of 
 the streets to the sovereign people ; and the man who used this 
 language was so blinded by prejudice as not to see that the blood 
 which he reviled gave the promise of a new race, that the mob 
 which faced him was not a crowd of Italian peasants, willing 
 victims of the martinet, that the Asiatic and the Greek, with their 
 sordid clothes and doubtful occupations, possessed more intelligence 
 than the Roman members of the Scipionic circle and might one day 
 
 oratione dissuasit. Cic. de Amic. 25. 95 Dissuasimus nos (Laelius), sed nihil de me : 
 de Scipione dicam libentius. Quanta illi, dii immortales ! fuit gravitas 1 quanta in 
 oratione majestas I . . . Itaque lex popularis suffragiis populi repudiata est. Cf. 
 Cic. de Or. ii. 40. 170. 
 
 iVellei. ii. 4. 4 Hie, eum interrogante tribuno Carbone quid de Ti. Gracchi 
 caede sentiret, respondit, si is occupandae rei publicae animum habuisset, jure 
 caesum. Et cum omnis contio adclamasset, " Hostium," inquit, " armatorum totiens 
 clamore non territus, qui possum vestro moveri, quorum noverca est Italia ? " Val. 
 Max. vi. 2. 3 Orto deinde murmure " Non efficietis," ait, "ut solutos verear quos 
 alligatos adduxi "- C/. Cic. pro Mil. 3.8; Liv. Ep. lix ; Plut. Ti. Gracch. 21. 
 
129 B.C.] INTERVENTION OF SCIPIO 157 
 
 be the rulers of Rome. The new race was one of infinite possibili- 
 ties. It needed guidance, not abuse. Carbo and his friends must 
 have been delighted with the issue of their experiment. Scipio 
 had paid the first instalment to that treasury of hatred, which was 
 soon to prove his ruin and to make his following a thing of the 
 past. 
 
 Such was the position of Scipio when he was approached by 
 the Italians. His interest in their fortunes was twofold. First he 
 viewed them with a soldier's eye.^ They were tending more and 
 more to form the flower of the Roman armies abroad : and, al- 
 though in obedience to civic sentiment he had employed a heavier 
 scourge on the backs of the auxiliaries than on those of the Roman 
 troops before Numantia,^ the chastisement, which he would have 
 doubtless liked to inflict on all, was but an expression of his in- 
 terest in their welfare. Next he admired the type for its own sake. 
 The sturdy peasant class was largely represented here, and he pro- 
 bably had more faith in its permanence amongst the federate cities 
 than amongst the needy burgesses whom the commissioners were 
 attempting to restore to agriculture. He could not have seen the 
 momentous consequences which would follow from a championship 
 of the Italian allies against the interests of the urban proletariate ; 
 that such a dualism of interests would lead to increased demands on 
 the part of the one, to a sullen resistance on the part of the other ; 
 that in this mere attempt to check the supposed iniquities of a too 
 zealous commission lay the germ of the franchise movement and 
 the Social War. His protection was a matter of justice and of in- 
 terest. The allies had deserved well and should not be robbed ; 
 they were the true protectors of Rome and their loyalty must not 
 be shaken. Scipio, therefore, took their protest to the senate. He 
 respected the susceptibilities of the people so far as to utter no 
 explicit word of adverse criticism on the Gracchan measure ; but he 
 dwelt on the difficulties which attended its execution, and he 
 suggested that the commissioners were burdened with an invidious 
 task in having to decide the disputed questions connected with the 
 land which they annexed. By the nature of the case their judg- 
 ments might easily appear to the litigants as tinged with prejudice. 
 It would be better, he suggested, if the functions of jurisdiction 
 
 'App. Bell. Civ. i. 19 i S' Is robs ■rro\f /lovs txirois KiXfirmivos irpoBvfuyriiTois 
 inrepiSeTv . • . HKvi/ire. 
 "Uy. Ep. Ivii. 
 
158 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 129 
 
 were separated from those of distribution and the former duties 
 given to some other authority.^ The senate accepted the sug- 
 gestion, and its reasonableness must have appealed even to the 
 people, for the measure embodying it must have passed the Comitia, 
 which alone could abrogate the Gracchan law.^ Possibly some 
 recent judgments of the commissioners had produced a sense of 
 uneasiness amongst large numbers of the citizen body, and there 
 may have been a feeling that it would be to the advantage of all 
 parties if the cause of scandal were removed. Perhaps none but 
 the inner circle of statesmen could have predicted the consequences 
 of the change. The decision of the agrarian disputes was now 
 entrusted to the consuls, who were the usual vehicles of adminis- 
 trative jurisdiction. The history of the past had proved over and 
 over again the utter futility of entrusting the administration of an 
 extraordinary and burdensome department to the regular magis- 
 trates. They were too busy to attend to it, even if they had the 
 will. But in this case even the will was lacking. Of the two 
 consuls Manius Aquillius was destined for the war in Asia, and his 
 colleague Caius Sempronius Tuditanus had no sooner put his hand 
 to the new work than he saw that the difficulties of adjudication 
 had been by no means the creation of the commissioners. He 
 answered eagerly to the call of a convenient Illyrian war and 
 quitted the judgment seat for the less harassing anxieties of the 
 camp.^ The functions of the commissioners were paralysed ; they 
 seem now to have reached a limit where every particle of land for 
 distribution was the subject of dispute, and, as there was no 
 authority in existence to settle the contested claims, the work of 
 assignation was brought to a sudden close. The masses of eager 
 claimants, that still remained unsatisfied, felt that they had been 
 betrayed ; the feeling spread amongst the urban populace, and the 
 name of Scipio was a word that now awoke suspicion and even 
 execi-ation.' It was not merely the sense of betrayal that ai-oused 
 this hostile sentiment ; the people charged him with ingratitude. 
 Masses of men, like individuals, love a proUgS more than a bene- 
 factor. They have a pride in looking at the colossal figure which 
 they have helped to create. And had not they in a sense made 
 Scipio i Their love had been quickened by the sense of danger ; 
 they had braved the anger of the nobles to put power into his 
 
 'App. BW;. C«». i. 19. *Liv. £/. Iviii (p. 127). »App. i.e. 
 
129 B.C.] DEATH OF SCIPIO 169 
 
 hands ; they had twice raised him to the consulship in violation of 
 the constitution. And now what was their reward ? He had 
 deUberately chosen to espouse the cause of the allies and oppose 
 the interests of the Roman electorate. Scipio's enemies had good 
 material to work upon. The casual grumblings of the streets were 
 improved on, and formulated in the openly expressed belief that his 
 re^ intention was the repeal of the Sempronian law, and in the 
 more far-fetched suspicion that he meant to bring a military force 
 to bear on the Roman mob, with its attendant horrors of street 
 massacre or hardly less bloody persecution. "^ 
 
 The attacks on Scipio were not confined to the informal lan- 
 guage of private intercourse. Hostile magistrates introduced his 
 enemies to the Rostra, and men like Fulvius Flaccus inveighed 
 bitterly against him.^ On the day when one of these attacks was 
 made, Scipio was defending his position before the people ; he had 
 been stung by the charge of ingratitude, for he retorted it on his 
 accusers ; he complained that an ill return was being made to 
 him for his many services to the State. In the evening Scipio was 
 escorted from the senate to his house by a crowd of sympathisers. 
 Besides senators and other Romans the escort comprised repre- 
 sentatives of his new clients, the Latins and the Italian allies.' 
 His mind was full of the speech which he meant to deliver to the 
 people on the following day. He retired early to his sleeping 
 chamber and placed his writing tablet beside his bed, that he might 
 fix the sudden inspirations of his waking hours. When morning 
 dawned, he was found lying on his couch but with every trace of 
 life extinct. The family inquisition on the slaves of the household 
 was held as a matter of course. Their statements were never pub- 
 lished to the world, but it was believed that under torture they had 
 confessed to seeing certain men introduced stealthily during the 
 night through the back part of the house ; these, they thought, had 
 strangled their master.* The reason which they assigned for their 
 reticence was then- fear of the people ; they knew that Scipio's 
 death had not appeased the popular fury, that the news had been 
 received with joy, and they did not wish by invidious revelations 
 to become the victims of the people's hate. The fears of the slaves 
 were subsequently reflected in the minds of those who would have 
 been willing to push the investigation further. There was ground 
 
 1 App. U. ^ Plut. C. Gracck. lo. 
 
 'Oros. V. 10. g ; Cic. de Amic. 3. 12. *App. Bell. Civ. i. 20. 
 
160 A HISTORY OF ROME [B-C. 129 
 
 for suspicion ; for Scipio, although some believed him delicate,^ had 
 shown no sign of recent illness. A scrutiny of the body is even 
 said to have revealed a livid impress near the throat.^ The in- 
 vestigation which followed a sudden death within the walls of a 
 Roman household, if it revealed the suspicion of foul play, was 
 usually the preliminary to a public inquiry. The duty of revenge 
 was sacred ; it appealed to the family even more than to the public 
 conscience. But there was no one to raise the cry for retribution. 
 He had no sons, and his family was represented but by his loveless 
 wife Sempronia. His many friends must indeed have talked of 
 making the matter public, and perhaps began at once to give vent 
 to those dark suspicions which down to a late age clouded the 
 names of so many of the dead man's contemporaries. But the pro- 
 ject is said to have been immediately opposed by representatives of 
 the popular party ; ^ the crime, if crime there was, had been no 
 vulgar murder; a suspicion that violence had been used was an 
 insult to the men who had fought him fairly in the political field ; 
 a quaestio instituted by the senate might be a mere pretext for a 
 judicial murder ; it might be the ruse by which the nobles sought 
 to compass the death of the people's new favourite and rising hope, 
 Caius Gracchus. Ultimately those who believed in the murder and 
 pined to avenge it, were constrained to admit that it was wiser to 
 avoid a disgraceful political wrangle over the body of their dead 
 hero. But, for the retreat to be covered, it must be publicly 
 announced by those who had most authority to speak, that Scipio 
 had died a natural death. This was accordingly the line taken by 
 Laelius, when he wrote the funeral oration which Quintus Fabius 
 Maximus delivered over the body of his uncle;* "We cannot / 
 sufficiently mourn this death by disease " were words purposely 
 spoken to be an index to the official version of the decease. The 
 fear of political disturbance which veiled the details of the tragedy, 
 also dictated that the man, whom friends and enemies alike knew 
 to have been the greatest of his age, should have no public funeral.^ 
 
 ^ Plut. Rom. 27 ot iJifv avTo/xdrus SvTa (piffei voirtiSii Ka/ieiv \pyov<riv. 
 
 ^Vellei. ii. 4 Mane in lectulo repertus est mortuus, ita ut quaedam elisarum 
 faucium in cervice reperirentur notae. 
 
 ' Plut. C. Gracch. 10 koI Seivbv oStus ipyov ^tt' i,vSp\ rif irp<lir<f koI neyiaTif 
 'Pa/ialav roKiiiiBiv oix ervxe SIktjs ouS' eis eXeyxov irpoijxeer • hfarnaav ykp 01 TtoKKoX 
 (coi KarJKvaav t^v Kpiaiv tnr^p rod Tofou (poffrjSevTes, /iij) ircptireT^js rij airlif rov ifi6vov 
 CnTov/ieyov yivifrai. Vellei. ii. 4 De tanti viri morte nulla habita est quaestio. Cf. 
 Liv. Ep. lix. ^ ■' 
 
 * Schol. Bob. ad Cic. Milan. 7. p. 283. » App. Bell. Civ. i. 20. 
 
129 B.C.] DEATH OF SCIPIO 161 
 
 The government might well fear a scandalous scene — the Forum 
 with its lanes and porticoes crowded by a snarling holiday crowd, 
 the laudation of the speakers interrupted by gibes and howls, 
 the free-fight that would probably follow the performance of the 
 obsequies. 
 
 But suppression means rumour. The mystery was profoundly 
 enjoyed by this and subsequent ages. Every name that political or 
 domestic circumstances could conveniently suggest, was brought into 
 connection with Scipio's death. Caius Gracchus,^ Fulvius Flaccus,^ 
 Caius Papirius Carbo ^ were all indifferently mentioned. Suspicion 
 clung longest to Carbo, probably as the man who had lately come 
 into the most direct conflict with his supposed victim ; even Carbo's 
 subsequent conversion to conservatism could not clear his name, 
 and his guilt seems to have been almost an article of faith amongst 
 the optimates of the Ciceronian period. But there were other 
 versions which hinted at domestic crime. Did not Cornelia have 
 an ^terest in removing the man who was undoing the work of her 
 son, and might she not have had a willing accomplice in Scipio's 
 wife Sempronia .'' * It was believed that this marriage of arrange- 
 ment had never been sanctioned by love ; Sempronia was plain and 
 childless, and the absence of a husband's affection may have led her 
 to think only of her duties as a daughter and a sister.* People 
 who were too sane for these extravagances, but were yet unwilling 
 to accept the prosaic solution of a natural death and give up the 
 pleasant task of conjecture, suggested that Scipio had found death 
 by his own hand. The motive assigned was the sense of his inability 
 to keep the promises which he had made.^ These promises may 
 have been held to be certain suggestions for the amelioration of the 
 condition of the Latin and Italian allies. 
 
 But it required no conjecture and no suspicion to emphasise 
 the tragic nature of Scipio's death. He was but fifty-six ; he was 
 by far the greatest general that Rome could command, a cham- 
 pion who could spring into the breach when all seemed lost, make 
 an army out of a rabble and win victory from defeat ; he was a 
 great moral force, the scourge of the new vices, the enemy of the 
 
 1 Schol. Bob. l.c. ; cf. Plut. C. Gracch. lo. = Plut. I.e. 
 
 ' Cic. ad Fam. ix. 21. 3, ad Q.fr. ii. 3. 3, de Or. ii. 40. 170. Cf. de Antic. 12. 41. 
 
 « App. Bell. Civ. i. 20. ° App. I.e. 
 
 " App. Bell. Civ. i. 20 is iytoi SoKoviriVt e/cic anedave (TvyiSiiv '6ri ovk gctolto 
 Svi/arhs kotoo-x"" ^'' v^^cx""'"- ^°' ^^^ theory of suicide ef. Plut. Rom. 27 oi S' 
 avrhv vip!' eavrov <pap/i<iKois awodayelp {Keyovirw), 
 11 
 
162 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 129 
 
 provincial oppressor ; he was the greatest intellectual influence in 
 aristocratic Rome, embellishing the staid rigour of the ancient 
 Roman with something of the humanism of the Greek ; Xenophon 
 was the author who appealed most strongly to his simple and 
 manly tastes : and his purity of soul and clearness of intellect were 
 fitly expressed in the chasteness and elegance of his Latin style. 
 The modern historian has not to tax his fancy in discovering great 
 qualities in Scipio ; the mind of every unprejudiced contemporary 
 must have echoed the thought of Laelius, when he wrote in his 
 funeral speech " We cannot thank the gods enough that they gave 
 to Rome in preference to other states a man with a heart and 
 intellect like this ".^ But the dominant feeling amongst thinking 
 men, who had any respect for the empire and the constitution, 
 was that of panic at the loss. Quintus Metellus Macedonicus had 
 been his political foe; but when the tidings of death were 
 brougjaf^yhi™) he was like one distraught. "Citizens," he wailed, 
 " t;he Walls of our city are in ruins." ^ And that a great breach 
 had been made in the political and military defences of Rome is 
 again the burden of Laelius's complaint, " He has perished at a 
 time when a mighty man is needed by you and by all who wish the 
 safety of this commonwealth ". These utterances were not merely 
 a lament for a great soldier, but the mourning for a man who might 
 have held the balance between classes and saved a situation that 
 was becoming intolerable. We cannot say whether any definite 
 means of escape from the brewing storm was present to Scipio's 
 mind, or, if he had evolved a plan, whether he was master of the 
 means to render it even a temporary success. Perhaps he had 
 meddled too little with politics to have acquired the dexterity 
 requisite for a reconciler. Possibly his pride and his belief in the 
 aristocracy as an aggregate would have stood in his way. But he 
 was a man of moderate views who led a middle party, and he 
 attracted the anxious attention of men who believed that salvation 
 would not come from either of the extremes. He had once been 
 the favourite of the crowd, and might be again, he commanded the 
 distant respect of the nobility, and he had all Italy at his side. 
 Was there likely to be a man whose position was better suited to a 
 reconciliation of the war of jarring interests.? Perhaps not; but 
 at the time of his death the first steps which he had taken had 
 
 1 Schol. Bob. in Milan, I.e. ' Val. Max. iv. x. 12. 
 
131 B.C.] TRIBUNATE OF CARBO 163 
 
 only widened the horizon of war. He found a struggle between 
 the commons and the nobles ; he emphasised, although he had not 
 created, the new struggle between the commons and Italy. His 
 next step would have been decisive, but this he was not fated to 
 take. 
 
 When we turn from the history of the agrarian movement and 
 its unexpected consequences to other items in the internal fortunes 
 of Rome during this period, we find that Tiberius Gracchus had 
 left another legacy to the State. This was the idea of a magistracy 
 which, freed from the restraint of consulting the senate, should 
 busy itself with politicai reform, remove on its own initiative the 
 obstacles which the constitution threw in the path of its progi-ess, 
 and effect the regeneration of Rome and even of Italy by means of 
 ordinances elicited from the people. The social question was here 
 as elsewhere the efficient cause ; but it left results which seemed 
 strangely disproportionate to their source. The career of Gracchus 
 had shown that the leadership of the people was encumbered by 
 two weaknesses. These were the packing of assemblies by de- 
 pendants of the rich, whose votes were known and whose voices 
 were therefore under control, and the impossibility of re-election to 
 office, which rendered a continuity of policy on the part of the 
 demagogue impossible. It was the business of the tribunate of 
 Carbo to remove both these hindrances to popular power. His 
 first proposal was to introduce voting by ballot in the legislative 
 assemblies ; ^ it was one that could not easily be resisted, since the 
 principle of the ballot had already been recognised in elections, and 
 in all judicial processes with the exception of trials for treason. 
 These measures seem to have had the support of the party of 
 moderate reform : and Scipio and his friends probably offered no 
 resistance to the new application of the principle. Without their 
 support, and unprovided with arguments which might excite the 
 fears or jealousy of the people, the nobility was powerless : and the 
 bill, therefore, easily became law. The change thus introduced 
 was unquestionably a great one. Hitherto the country voters had 
 been the most independent ; now the members of the urban prole- 
 tariate were equally free, and from this time forth the voice of the 
 city could find an expression uninfluenced by the smiles or frowns 
 of wealthy patrons. The ballot produced its intended effect more 
 
 1 Cic. de Leg. iii. i6. 35 Xarbonis est tertia (lex tabellaria) de jubendis legibus 
 ac vetandis. 
 
L64 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 131 
 
 "ully in legislation than in election ; its introduction into the latter 
 phere caused the nobility to become purchasers instead of direc- 
 ;ors ; but it was seldom that a law affected individual interests 
 ;o directly as to make a bargain for votes desirable. The chief 
 Dribery found in the legislative assemblies was contained in the 
 proposal submitted by the demagogue. 
 
 Carbo's second proposal, that immediate and indefinite re-election 
 ;o the tribunate should be permitted/ was not recommended on the 
 lame grounds of precedent or reason. The analogies of the Roman 
 constitution were opposed to it, and the rules against the perpetuity 
 )f office which limited the patrician magistracies, and made even a 
 iingle re-election to the consulship illegal,^ while framed in support 
 jf aristocratic government, had had as their pretext the security of 
 :he Republic, and therefore ostensibly of popular freedom and con- 
 trol. Again, the people might be reminded that the tribunate was 
 not always a power friendly to their interests, and that the veto 
 which blocked the expression of their will might be continued to a 
 second year by the obstinate persistence of a minority of voters. 
 Excellent arguments of a popular kind could be, and probably 
 svere, employed against the proposal. Certainly the sentiment 
 which really animated the opposition could have found little favour 
 with the masses, who ultimately voted for the rejection of the 
 bill. All adherents of senatorial government must have seen in 
 the success of the measure the threat of a permanent opposition, 
 the possibility of the rise of official demagogues of the Greek type, 
 monarchs in reality though not in name, the proximity of a 
 Gracchan movement unhampered by the weakness which had led to 
 Graxjchus's fall. It is easier for an electorate to maintain a prin- 
 ciple by the maintenance of a personality than to show its fervour 
 for a creed by submitting new and untried exponents to a rigid con- 
 fession of faith. The senate knew that causes wax and wane with 
 the men who have formulated them, and it had always been more 
 afraid of individuals than of masses. Scipio's view of the Gracchan 
 movement and his acceptance of the cardinal maxims of existing 
 statecraft, prepare us for the attitude which he assumed on this 
 occasion. His speech against the measure was believed to have 
 been decisive in turning the scale. He was supported by his 
 henchmen, and the faithful Laelius also gave utterance to the pro- 
 
 1 P. 155- ' Liv. Ep. Ivi. 
 
129-126 B.C.] NEGOTIATIONS WITH THE ITALIANS 165 
 
 tests of the moderates against the unwelcome innovation.^ This 
 victory, if decisive, would have made the career of Caius Gracchus 
 impossible — a career which, while it fully justified the attitude of 
 the opposition, more than fulfilled the designs of the advocates of 
 the change. But the triumph was evanescent. Within the next 
 eight years re-election to the tribunate was rendered possible 
 under certain circumstances. The successful proposal is said to have 
 taken the form of permitting any one to be chosen, if the number 
 of candidates fell short of the ten places which were to be filled.^ 
 This arrangement was probably represented as a corollary of the 
 ancient religious injunction which forbade the outgoing tribunes 
 to leave the Plebs unprovided with guardians ; and this present- 
 ment of the case probably weakened the arguments of the opposi- 
 tion. The aristocratic party could hardly have misconceived the 
 import of the change. It was intended that a party which desired 
 the re-election of a tribune should, by withdrawing some of its 
 candidates at the last moment,* qualify him for reinvestiture with 
 the magistracy. 
 
 The party of reform were rightly advised in attempting to 
 secure an adequate mechanism for the fulfilment of a democratic 
 programme before they put their wishes into shape. That they 
 were less fortunate in the proposals that they formulated, was due 
 to the fact that these proposals were at least as much the result 
 of necessity as of deliberate choice. The agrarian question was 
 stiU working its wicked will. It hung like an incubus round the 
 necks of democrats and forced them into most undemocratic paths. 
 The legacy left by Scipio had become the burdensome inheritance 
 of his foes. Italian claims were now the impasse which stopped 
 the present distribution and the future acquisition of land. The 
 minds of many were led to inquire whether it might not be possible 
 to strike a bargain with the allies, and thus began that mischievous 
 co-operation between a party in Rome and the protected towns in 
 Italy, which suggested hopes that could not be satisfied, led to open 
 revolt as the result of the disappointment engendered by failure, 
 
 • P. 155, note 2. 
 
 '^ App. Bell. Civ. i. 21 zeal ydp tis ^Srj v6iios iKexipairo, el Sii/Mpxas iviioi rats 
 ■itapayye\ittis, rhf Srifiov ix itivrwv eiri\fye<rBai. It is possible that Appian has mis- 
 construed the provision that, if enough candidates did not receive the absolute 
 majority required for election (explere tribus), any one — even a tribune already in 
 office — should be eligible. See Strachan-Davidson in loc. 
 
 ^ Or possibly by securing that some of its candidates should not receive the 
 number of votes requisite for election. See the last note. 
 
166 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 and might easily be interpreted as veiling treasonable designs against 
 the Roman State. The franchise was to be offered to the Italian 
 towns on condition that they waived their rights in the public 
 land.i The details of the bargain were probably unknown, even to 
 contemporaries, for the negotiations demanded secrecy ; but it is 
 clear that the arrangements must have been at once general and 
 complex ; for no organisation is likely to have existed that could 
 bind each Italian township to the agreement, nor could any town 
 have undertaken to prejudice all the varying rights of its individual 
 citizens. When the Italians eagerly accepted the offer, a pledge 
 must have been got from their leading men that the local govern- 
 ments would not press their claims to the disputed land as an 
 international question ; for it was under this aspect that the dispute 
 presented the gravest difficulties. The commons of these states 
 might be comforted by the assurance that, when they had become 
 Roman citizens, they would themselves be entitled to share in the 
 assignations. These negotiations, which may have extended over 
 two or three years, ended by bringing crowds of Italians to Rome. 
 They had no votes ; but the moral influence of their presence was 
 very great. They could applaud or hiss the speakers in the in- 
 formal gatherings of the Contio ; it was not impossible that in the 
 last resort they might lend physical aid to that section of the de- 
 mocrats which had advocated their cause. It might even have been 
 possible to manufacture votes for some of these immigrants. A 
 Latin domiciled in Rome always enjoyed a limited suffrage in the 
 Comitia, and a pretended domicile might easily be invented for a 
 temporary resident. Nor was it even certain that the wholly un- 
 qualified foreigner might not give a surreptitious vote ; for the 
 president of the assembly was the man interested in the passing of 
 the bill, and his subordinates might be instructed not to submit the 
 qualifications of the voters to too strict a scrutiny. It was under 
 these circumstances that the senate resorted to the device, rare but 
 not unprecedented, of an alien act. Following its instructions, 
 the tribune Marcus Junius Pennus introduced a proposal that 
 foreigners should be excluded from the city.^ We know nothing 
 
 * App. Bell. Civ. i. 21 Ral rives ia-niyovvTO robs irviiiJi.dxovs S.iravTas, of Sj) Trepl t^s 
 7^s jiiXiffTa &i/T4\eyov, is riiii 'Pw/ialuv iroKndav avaypi\jiai, S>s iJ.el(oyi ^i^piTi Trepl t?s 
 yris oil SiOLO-o/ifyovs. Kal 4SexovTO Haiievoi toB9' 01 ItoAiStoi, vpoTiBevTss rap x"?^"" 
 T^v TTOKiTeiav. 
 
 ^Cic. de Off. iii. 11. 47 Male etiam qui peregrines urbibus uti prohibent eosque 
 exterminant, ut Pennus apud patres nostros . . . Nam esse pro cive qui civis non 
 sit rectum est non licere ; quam legem tulerunt sapientissimi consules Crassus et 
 
126 B.C.] ALIEN ACT OF PENNUS 167 
 
 of the wording of the act. It may have made no specific mention 
 of Italians, and its operation was presumably limited to strangers 
 not domiciled before a certain date. But, like all similar provisions, 
 it must have contained further limitations, for it is inconceivable 
 that the foreign trader, engaged in legitimate business, was hustled 
 summarily from the city. But, however limited its scope, its end 
 was clear : and the fact that it passed the Comitia shows that the 
 franchise movement was by no means wholly popular. A crowd is 
 not so easy of conversion as an individual. Recent events must 
 have caused large numbers of the urban proletariate to hate the 
 very name of the Italians, and the idea of sharing the privileges of 
 empire with the foreigner must already have been distasteful to the 
 average Roman mind. It was in vain that Caius Gracchus, to whom 
 the suggestion of his brother was already becoming a precept, tried 
 to emphasise the political ruin which the spirit of exclusiveness had 
 brought to cities of the past.^ The appeal to history and to nobler 
 motives must have fallen on deaf ears. It is possible, however, that 
 the personality of the speaker might have been of some avail, had he 
 been ably supported, and had the people seen all their leaders united 
 on the question of the day. But there is reason for supposing that 
 serious differences of opinion existed amongst these leaders as to the 
 wisdom of the move. Some may have held that the party of reform 
 had merely drifted in this direction, that the proposal for enfran- 
 chisement had never been considered on its own merits, and that 
 they had no mandate from the people for purchasing land at this 
 costly price. It may have been at this time that Carbo first showed 
 his dissatisfaction with the party, of which he had almost been the 
 accepted leader. If he declined to accompany his colleagues on 
 this new and untried path, the first step in his convei-sion to the 
 party of the optimates betrays no inconsistency with his former at- 
 titude ; for he could maintain with justice that the proposal for 
 enfranchising Italy was not a popular measure either in spirit or in 
 fact. 
 
 It was, therefore, with more than doubtful chances of success 
 that Fulvius Flaccus, who was consul in the following year, at- 
 
 Scaevola (95 B.C.) ; usu vero urbis prohibere peregrines sane inhumanum est. For 
 the date of Pennus's law see Cic. Brut. 28. 109 : — Fuit . . . M. Lepido et L. Oreste 
 consulibus quaestor Gracchus, tribunus Pennus. 
 
 ^ Festus p. 286 Resp. multarum civitatum pluraliter dixit C. Gracchus in ea, 
 quam conscripsit de lege p. Enni (Penni MulUr) et peregrinis, cum ait : " eae 
 nationes, cum aliis rebus, per avaritiam atque stultitiam res publicas suas amiserunt "- 
 
L68 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 125 
 
 ;empted to bring the question to an issue by an actual proposal of 
 itizenship for the allies. The details of his scheme of enfranchise- 
 nent have been very imperfectly preserved.^ We are unaware 
 i^hether, like Caius Gracchus some three years later, he proposed 
 
 endow the Latins with higher privileges than the other allies : 
 ,nd, although he contemplated the non-acceptance of Roman citizen- 
 hip by some of the allied communities, since he offered these cities 
 he right of appeal to the people as a substitute for the status which 
 hey declined, we do not know whether his bill granted citizenship 
 t once to all accepting states, or merely opened a way for a request 
 jr this right to come from individual cities to the Roman people. 
 Jut it is probable that the bill in some way asserted the willingness 
 f the people to confer the franchise, and that, if any other steps 
 fere involved in the method of conferment, they were little more 
 ban formal. The fact that the provocatio was contemplated as 
 
 substitute for citizenship is at once a proof that the old spirit of 
 bate life, which viewed absorption as extermination, was known 
 bill to be strong in some of the Italian communes, and that 
 lany of the individual Italians were believed to value the citizen- 
 tiip mainly as a means of protecting their persons against Roman 
 fficialdom. That the democratic party was strong at the moment 
 rhen this proposal was given to the world is shown by the fact 
 bat Flaccus filled the consulship ; that it had little sympathy with 
 is scheme is proved by the isolation of the proposer and by the 
 lanner in which the senate was allowed to intervene. The con- 
 jrment of the franchise had been proved to be essentially a popular 
 rerogative ; ^ the consultation of the senate on such a point might 
 e advisable, but was by no means necessary ; for, in spite of the 
 ding theory that the authority of the senate should be respected 
 
 1 all matters of legislation, the complex Roman constitution re- 
 ognised shades of difference, determined by the quality of the 
 articular proposal, with respect to the observance of this rule. 
 
 ^ App. Bell. Civ. i. 34 ^oiXovios i\dKKOs fmareiav liiKurra S)) rparos SSe h rh 
 av^pdrarov iipediCe Toi/s 'IraKLdras iiriOvfii'ii' Trjs 'Pauaiaiy iroKLrelas i>s KOii/avoiis rrjs 
 y€fiovlas aprl im-i\K6aiv ia-o/ievovs. (Cf. i. 21), Val. Max. ix. 5. I M. Fulvius Flaccus 
 Msul, . . . cum perniciosissimas rei publicae leges introduceret de civitate Italiae 
 inda et de provocatione ad populum eorum, qui civitatem mutare noluissent, aegre 
 Dmpulsus est ut in Curiam veniret. 
 
 * Liv. xxxviii. 36. Four tribunes vetoed a rogatio to grant voting rights to the 
 unicipia of Formiae, Fundi and Arpinum in 188 B.C. on the ground that the 
 mate's judgment had not been taken, but Edocti populi esse, non senatus jus, 
 iffragium quibus velit impertire, destiterunt incepto. 
 
125 B.C.] PROPOSAL TO EXTEND THE FRANCHISE 169 
 
 The position of Flaccus was legally stronger than that of Tiberius 
 Gracchus had been. Had he been well supported by men of in- 
 fluence or by the masses, the senate's judgment might have been 
 set at naught. But the people were cold, Carbo had probably 
 turned away, and Caius Gracchus had gone as quaestor to Sardinia. 
 The senate was emboldened to adopt a firm attitude. They invited 
 the consul to take them into his confidence. After much delay 
 he entered the senate house ; but a stubborn silence was his only 
 answer to the admonitions and entreaties of the fathers that he 
 would desist from his purpose.^ Flaccus knew the futility of arguing 
 with people who had adopted a foregone conclusion ; he would not 
 even deign to accept a graceful retreat from an impossible position. 
 The matter must be dropped ; but to withdraw it at the exhortation 
 of the senate, although complimentary to his peers and perhaps not 
 unpleasing even to the people in their present humour, would pre- 
 judice the chances of the future. In view of better days it was 
 wiser to shelve than to discard the measure. His attitude may also 
 have been influenced by pledges made to the allies ; to these, help- 
 less as he was, he would yet be personally faithful. His fidelity 
 would have been put to a severe test had he remained in Italy; 
 but the supreme magistrate at Rome had always a refuge from a 
 perplexing situation. The voice of duty called him abroad,^ and 
 Flaccus set forth to shelter Massilia from the Salluvii and to build 
 up the Roman power in Transalpine Gaul.^ Perhaps only a few of 
 the leading democrats had knowledge enough to suspect the terrible 
 consequences that might be involved in the failure of the proposal 
 for conferring the franchise. To the senate and the Roman world 
 they must have caused as much astonishment as alarm. It could 
 never have been dreamed that the well-knit confederacy, which had 
 known no spontaneous revolt since the rising of Falerii in the middle 
 of the third century, could again be disturbed by internal war. Now 
 the very centre of this confederacy, that loyal nucleus which had 
 been unshaken by the victories of Hannibal, was to be the scene of 
 an insurrection, the product of hope long deferred, of expectations 
 recently kindled by injudicious promises, of resentment at Pennus's 
 
 'Val. Max. ix. 5. i Deinde partim monenti, partim oranti senatui ut incepto 
 desisteret, responsum non dedit . . . Flaccus in totius amplissimi ordinis contem- 
 nenda majestate versatus est. Cf. App. Bell. Civ. i. 21. 
 
 ^ App. Bell. Civ. i. 34 iartyoiiievos Se t^v yvd/iriy Kol im/ifvuv airy Koprepas, virb 
 TTJs ^ov\7Js iirl Tiva ffrparday e^eirefKpdTi dt^ T^5e. 
 
 ^ Liv. Ep. Ix ; Ammian. xv. 12. 5. 
 
170 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 125 
 
 success and Flaccus's failure. Fregellae, the town which assumed the 
 lead in the movement and either through overhaste or faulty in- 
 formation alone took the fatal step,^ was a Latin colony which had 
 been planted by Rome in the territory of the Volsci in the year 
 328 B.c.^ The position of the town had ensured its prosperity even 
 before it fell into the hands of Rome. It lay on the Liris in a rich 
 vine-growing country, and within that circle of Latin and Campanian 
 states, which had now become the industrial centre of Italy. It 
 was itself the centre of the group of Latin colonies that lay as 
 bulwarks of Rome between the Appian and Latin roads, and had 
 in the Hannibalic war been chosen as the mouthpiece of the eighteen 
 faithful cities, when twelve of the Latin states grew weary of their 
 burdens and wavered in their allegiance.^ The importance of the 
 city was manifest and of long-standing, its self-esteem was doubtless 
 great, and it perhaps considered that its signal services had been 
 inadequately recompensed by Rome. But its peculiar grievances 
 are unknown, or the particular reasons which gave Roman citizen- 
 ship such an excessive value in its eyes. It is possible that its 
 thriving farmer class had been angered by the agrarian commission 
 and by undue demands for military, service, and, in spite of the 
 commercial equality with the Romans which they enjoyed in virtue 
 of their Latin rights, they may have compared their position un- 
 favourably with that of communities in the neighbourhood which 
 had received the Roman franchise in full. Towns like Arpinum, 
 Fundi and Formiae had been admitted to the citizen body without 
 forfeiting their self-government. Absorption need not now entail 
 the almost penal consequences of the dissolution of the constitution ; 
 while the possession of citizenship ensured the right of appeal and a 
 full participation in the religious festivals and the amenities of the 
 capital. It is also possible that, in the case of a prosperous industrial 
 and agricultural community situated actually within Latium, the 
 desire for actively participating in the decisions of the sovereign 
 people may have played its part. But sentiment probably had 
 in its councils as large a share as reason : and the fact that this 
 sentiment led to premature action, and that the fall of the state 
 was due to treason, may lead us to suppose that the Romans had 
 to deal with a divided people and that one section of the com- 
 
 ^ An isolated notice speaks of a rising at Asculum. [Victor] de Vir. III. 65 (C. 
 Gracchus) Asculanae et Fregellanae defectionis invidiam sustinuit. 
 ' Liv. viii. 22. ' Liv. xxvii. 10. 
 
125 B.C.] REVOLT OF FREGELLAE 171 
 
 munity, perhaps represented by the upper or official class, although 
 it may have sympathised with the general desire for the attainment 
 of the franchise, was by no means prepared to stake the ample 
 fortunes of the town on the doubtful chance of successful rebellion. 
 A prolonged resistance of the citizens within their walls might have 
 given the impulse to a general rising of the Latins. Had Fregellae 
 played the part of a second Numantia, the Social War might have 
 been anticipated by thirty-five years. But the advantage to be 
 gained from time was foiled by treason. A certain Numitorius PuUus 
 betrayed the state to the praetor Lucius Opimius, who had been 
 sent with an army from Rome. Had Fregellae stood alone, it might 
 have been spared ; but it was felt that some extreme measure either 
 of concession or of terrorism was necessary to keep discontent from 
 assuming the same fiery form in other communities. In the later 
 war with the allies a greater danger was bought off" by concession. 
 But there the disease had run its course ; here it was met in its 
 earliest stage, and the familiar devise of excision was felt to be 
 the true remedy. The principle of the "awful warning,'' which 
 Alexander had applied to Thebes and Rome to Corinth, doomed 
 the greatest of the Latin cities to destruction. Regardless of the 
 past services of Fregellae and of the fact that the passion for the 
 franchise was the most indubitable sign of the loyalty of the town, 
 the government ordered that the walls of the surrendered city should 
 be razed and that the town should become a mere open village un- 
 distinguished by any civic privilege.^ A portion of its territory was 
 during the next year employed for the foundation of the citizen 
 colony of Fabrateria.^ The new settlement was the typical Roman 
 garrison in a disaffected country. But it proved the weakness of 
 the present regime that such a crude and antiquated method should 
 have to be employed in the heart of Latium. Security, however, 
 was perhaps not the sole object of the foundation. The confiscated 
 land of Fregellae was a boon to a government sadly in need of 
 popularity at home. 
 
 An excellent opportunity was now offered for impressing 
 the people with the enormity of the offence that had been 
 committed by some of their leaders, and prosecutions were 
 
 ' Liv. Ep. Ix L. Opimius praetor Fregellanos, qui defecerant, in deditionem 
 accepit ; Fregellas diruit. Cf. Vellei. ii. 6 ; Obsequens go ; Plut. C. Gracch. 3 ; 
 [Cic] ad Herenn. iv. 15. 22. 
 
 'Vellei. i. 15 Cassio autem Longino et Sextio Calvino . . . consulibus Fabra- 
 teria deducta est. 
 
172 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 125 
 
 directed against the men who had been foremost in support 
 of the movement for extending the franchise. It was pretended 
 that they had suggested designs as well as kindled hopes. The 
 fate of the lesser advocates of the Italian cause is unknown ; but 
 Caius Gracchus, against whom an indictment was directed, cleared 
 his name of all complicity in the movement.^ The effect of these 
 measures of suppression was not to improve matters for the future. 
 The allies were burdened with a new and bitter memory; their 
 friends at Rome were furnished with a new cause for resentment. 
 If the Roman people continued selfish and apathetic, a leader might 
 arise who would find the Italians a better support for his position 
 than the Roman mob. If he did not arise or if he failed, the sole 
 but certain arbitrament was that of the sword. 
 
 The foreign activity of Rome during this period did not reflect 
 the troubled spirit of the capital. It was of little moment that 
 petty wars were being waged in East and West, and that bulletins 
 sometimes brought news of a general's defeat. Rome was accustomed 
 to these things ; and her efforts were still marked by their usual 
 characteristics of steady expansion and decorous success. To pre- 
 dicate failure of her foreign activity for this period is to predicate 
 it for all her history, for never was an empire more slowly won or 
 more painfully preserved. It is true that at the commencement of 
 this epoch an imperialist might have been justified in taking a 
 gloomy view of the situation. In Spain Numantia was inflicting 
 more injury on Roman prestige than on Roman power, while the 
 long and harassing slave-war was devastating Sicily. But these 
 perils were ultimately overcome, and meanwhile circumstances had 
 led to the first extension of provincial rule over the wealthy East. 
 
 The kingdom of Pergamon had long been the mainstay of 
 Rome's influence in the Orient. Her contact with the other pro- 
 tected princedoms was distant and fitful ; but as long as her 
 mandates could be issued through this faithful vassal, and he could 
 rely on her whole-hearted support in making or meeting aggressions, 
 the balance of power in the East was tolerably secure. It had been 
 necessary to make Eumenes the Second see that he was wholly 
 in the power of Rome, her vassal and not her ally. He had been 
 rewarded and strengthened, not for his own deserts, but that he 
 might be fitted to become the policeman of Western Asia, and it 
 had been successfully shown that the hand which gave could also 
 
 ' Plut. C. Gracch. 3. 
 
159-138 B.C.] THE KINGDOM OF PERGAMON 173 
 
 take away. The lesson was learnt by the Pergamene power, and 
 fortunately the dynasty was too short-lived for a king to arise who 
 should forget the crushing display of Roman power which had fol- 
 lowed the Third Macedonian War, or for the realisation of that 
 greater danger of a protectorate — a struggle for the throne which 
 should lead one of the pretenders to appeal to a national sentiment 
 and embark on a national war. Eumenes at his death had left a 
 direct successor in the person of his son Attalus, who had been 
 born to him by his wife Stratonice, the daughter of Ariarathes 
 King of Cappadocia.i But Attalus was a mere boy at the time of 
 his father's death, and the choice of a guardian was of vital im- 
 portance for the fortunes of the monarchy. Every consideration 
 pointed to the uncle of the heir, and in the strong hands of Attalus 
 the Second the regency became practically a monarchy.^ The new 
 ruler was a man of more than middle age, of sober judgment, and 
 deeply versed in all the mysteries of kingcraft ; for a mutual trust, 
 rare amongst royal brethren in the East, had led Eumenes to treat 
 him more as a colleague than as a lieutenant. He had none of the 
 insane ambition which sees in the diadem the good to which all 
 other blessings may be fitly sacrificed, and had resisted the invita- 
 tion of a Roman coterie that he should thrust his suspected brother 
 from the throne and reign himself as the acknowledged favourite of 
 Rome. In the case of Attalus familiarity with the suzerain power 
 had not bred contempt. He had served with Manlius in Galatia ^ 
 and with Paulus in Macedonia,* and had been sent at least five times 
 as envoy to the capital itself.^ The change from a private station to 
 
 1 It has been supposed that this boy may really have been the son of Attalus 
 brother of Eumenes, a fruit of the transitory connection between this prince and 
 Stratonice, which followed the false news of Eumenes's death in 172 B.C. See F. 
 Kopp De A f tali III patre in Rhein. Mus. xlviii. pp. 154 ff . ; Wilcken in Pauly- 
 Wissowa Real. Enc. p. 2170, and for the temporary marriage of Attalus with 
 Stratonice Plut. de Frat. Amor. 18 ; Polyb. xxx. 2. 6. Livy (xlii. 16) and perhaps 
 Diodorus (xxix. 34) speak only of Attalus's wooing, not of his marriage. If Attalus 
 the Third was not the son of Eumenes, he was at least adopted by the king and 
 was clearly recognised as his heir. The official view made the relationship between 
 the Attali that of uncle and nephew. See note 2. 
 
 ^ For the guardianship of the younger Attalus see Strabo xiii. 4. 2. The 
 recognition of the regent as king is clearly attested by inscriptions (Frankel 
 Inschrifien von Pergamon nn. 214 ff., 224, 225, 248. In n. 248 the future Attalus the 
 Third is called by the king 5 TaSi\<pov vths (1. 18, cf. 1. 32 6 fleiiis fiov used by Attalus 
 the Third) and has some power of appointment to the priesthood. There is no sign 
 that the nephew was in any other respect a co-regent of the uncle. See Frankel 
 op. cit. p. 169. 
 
 ' Liv. xxxviii. cc. 12, 23, 25 ; Polyb. xxi. 39. 
 
 * Liv. xliv. 36 ; xlv. ig. 
 
 ' Wilcken in Pauly-Wissowa Real. Enc. p. 2168 foil. 
 
174 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 138 
 
 a throne did not alter his conviction that the best interests of his 
 country would be served by a steady adherence to the power, whose 
 marvellous development to be the mainspring of Eastern politics 
 was a miracle which he had witnessed with his own eyes. He had 
 grasped the essentials of the Roman character sufficiently to see 
 that this was not one of the temporary waves of conquest that had 
 so often swept over the unchangeable East and spent their strength 
 in the very violence of their flow, nor did he commit the error of 
 mistaking self-restraint for weakness. Monarchs like himself were 
 the necessary substitute for the dominion which the conquering 
 State had been strong enough to spurn; and he threw himself 
 zealously into the task of forwarding the designs of Rome in the 
 dynastic struggles of the neighbouring nations. He helped to 
 restore Ariarathes the Fifth to his kingdom of Cappadocia,^ and 
 appealed to Rome against the aggressions of Prusias the Second of 
 Bithynia. He was saved by the decisive intervention of the senate, 
 but not until he had been twice driven within the walls of his 
 capital by his victorious enemy.^ His own peace and the interests 
 of Rome were now secured by his support of Nicomedes, the son of 
 Prusias, who had won the favour of the Romans and was placed on 
 the throne of his father. He had even interfered in the succession to 
 the kingdom of the Seleucidae, when the Romans thought fit to 
 support the pretensions of Alexander Balas to the throne of Syria.' 
 Lastly he had sent assistance to the Roman armies in the conflict 
 which ended in the final reduction of Greece.* There was no question 
 of his abandoning his regency during his life-time. Rome could not 
 have found a better instrument, and it was perhaps in obedience 
 to the wishes of the senate, and certainly in accordance with their 
 will, that he held the supreme power until his reign of twenty-one 
 yeai-s was closed by his death.* Possibly the qualities of the right- 
 ful heir may not have inspired confidence, for a strong as well as a 
 faithful friend was needed on the throne of Pergamon. The new 
 ruler. Attains the Third, threatened only the danger that springs 
 from weakness ; but, had not his rule been ended by an early death, 
 it is possible that Roman intervention might have been called in to 
 
 ' Polyb. xxxii. 22 ; Diod. xxxi. 32 b. 
 
 "For the details of this struggle see Wilcken I.e. p. 2172; Ussing Pergamos 
 p. 50. 
 
 3 Ussing op. cit. p. 51. 1 Strabo xiii. 4. 2. 
 
 " Strabo I.e. ; Lucian. Macrob. 12. He was sixty-one years old at his accession 
 and eighty-two years old at the time of his death. 
 
133 B.C.] BEQUEST OF ATTALUS III. 175 
 
 save the monarchy from the despair of his subjects, to hand it over 
 to some more worthy vassal, or, in default of a suitable ruler, to 
 reduce it to the form of a province. The restraint under which 
 Attains had lived during his uncle's guardianship, had given him 
 the sense of impotence that issues in bitterness of temper and 
 reckless suspicion. The suspicion became a mania when the death 
 of his mother and his consort created a void in his life which he 
 persisted in believing to be due to the criminal agency of man. 
 Relatives and friends were now the immediate victims of his dis- 
 ordered mind,^ and the carnival of slaughter was followed by an 
 apathetic indifference to the things of the outer world. Dooming 
 himself to a sordid seclusion, the king solaced his gloomy leisure 
 with pursuits that had perhaps become habitual during his early 
 detachment from affairs. He passed his time in ornamental 
 gardening, modelling in wax, casting in bronze and working in 
 metal.^ His last great object in life was to raise a stately tomb 
 to his mother Stratonice. It was while he was engaged in this 
 pious task that exposure to the sun engendered an illness which 
 caused his death. When the last of the legitimate Attalids had 
 gone to his gi"ave, it was found that the vacant kingdom had been 
 disposed of by will, and that the Roman people was the nominated 
 heir.^ The genuineness of this document was subsequently disputed 
 by the enemies of Rome, and it was pronounced to be a forgery 
 perpetrated by Roman diplomats.* History furnishes evidence of the 
 reality of the testament, but none of the influences under which it 
 was made.^ It is quite possible that the last eccentric king was 
 
 ^Justin, xxxvi. 4 ; Diod, xxxiv. 3. 
 
 ^ Once, indeed, he seems to have taken the field with some success, as is proved 
 by a decree in honour of a victory (Frankel Inschr. von Pergamon n. 246). A vote 
 of the town of Elaea honours the king ctper^s eveKej/ koI avSpayadtas t^s kotA ■k6K€iiov, 
 KparfiffavTa tS>v virsvai'Tiaiy (1. 22). The victory is also mentioned in n 249. 
 
 'Liv. Ep. Iviii. Heredem autem populum Romanum reliquerat Attalus, rex 
 Pergami, Eumenis filius. Cf. ib. lix ; Strabo xiii. 4. 2 ; Vellei. ii. 4 ; Val. Max. v. 2, 
 ext. 3 ; Plut. Ti. Gracch. 14 ; Eutrop. iv. 18 ; Justin, xxxvi. 4. 5 ; Florus ii. 3 (iii. 15) ; 
 Oros. V. 8 ; App. Mithr. 62. 
 
 *Sall. Hist. iv. 6g Maur. (Epistula Mithridatis) Eumenen, cujus amicitiam 
 gloriose ostentant, initio prodidere (Romani) Antiocho, pacis mercedem; post 
 habitum custodiae agri captivi sumptibus et contumeliis ex rege miserrimum ser- 
 vorum effecere, simulatoque impio testamento filium ejus Aristonicum, quia patrium 
 regnum petiverat, hostium more per triumphum duxere. 
 
 ^ The reality of the will is attested by a Pergamene inscription (Frankel Inschr. 
 von Pergamon n. 249). The inscription records a resolution taken by the Sijixos 
 on the proposal of the arpo.Ti)yoi. The resolution is elicited after the will has 
 become known and in view of its ratification by Rome (1. 7 Set 5e itnKvpuB^vai tJjc 
 Sme^Kiiv urh 'Pa/iaiav). Pergamon has by the death of the king, and perhaps in 
 accordance with the will (see p. 177), been left " fi:ee " (1. 5 Attalus by passing away 
 
176 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 133 
 
 jealous enough to will that he should have no successor on the 
 throne, and cynical enough to see that it made little difference 
 whether the actual power of Rome was direct or indirect. It is 
 equally possible that the idea was suggested by the Romanising 
 party in his court ; although, when we remember the extreme un- 
 willingness that Rome had ever shown to accept a position of 
 permanent responsibility in the East, we can hardly imagine the 
 plan to have received the direct sanction of the senate. It is con- 
 ceivable, however, that many leading members of the government 
 were growing doubtful of the success of merely diplomatic inter- 
 ference with the troubled politics of the East ; that they desired a 
 nearer point of vantage from which to watch the movements of its 
 turbulent rulers ; and that, if consulted on the chances of success 
 which attended the new departure, they may have given a favour- 
 able reply. It was impossible by the nature of the case to question 
 the validity of the act. The legatees were far too powerful to make 
 it possible for their living chattels to raise an effective protest 
 except by tactual rebellion. But, from a legal point of view, a 
 principality like Pergamon that had grown out of the successful 
 seizure of a royal estate by its steward some hundred and fifty years 
 before this time, might easily be regarded as the property of its 
 kings ; ^ and certainly if any heirs outside the royal family were to be 
 admitted to the bequest, these would naturally be sought in the 
 power, which had increased its dominions, strengthened its position 
 and made it one of the great powers of the world. Neglected by 
 Rome the principality would have become the prey of neighbouring 
 powers; whilst the institution of a new prince, chosen from some royal 
 house, would have excited the jealousy and stimulated the rapacity of 
 the others. The acceptance of the bequest was inevitable, although 
 by this acceptance Rome was departing from the beaten track of 
 a carefully chosen policy. It is hinted that Attains in his bequest, 
 
 aTToKfKomfv t^v TrarpiSa rifiav ^\ev0epay). The first result of this freedom is that the 
 people extends the privileges of its citizenship. Full civic rights are given to 
 Paroeci {i.e. incolae) and (mercenary) soldiers ; the rights of Paroeci are given to 
 other classes : — freedmen, royal and public slaves. The motive assigned for the 
 conferment is public security, and the extension of rights seems to be justified (1. 
 6) by the liberal spirit shown by the late king in the organisation of his conquests 
 (see p. 175 note 2). The ruling idea seems to be that, if Pergamon was to be free, 
 she must be strong. See Frankel in loc, Ussing Pergamos p. 55. 
 
 1 At the same time the self-governing character of the civic corporation might 
 be recognised : and Attalus, if he made the will, may have been courteous enough 
 to recognise the " freedom " of the city from this point of view. See p. 177. 
 
132 B.C.] REVOLT OF ARISTONICUS 177 
 
 or the Romans in their acceptance, stipulated for the freedom of 
 the dominion.^ This freedom may be merely a euphemism for 
 provincial rule when contrasted with absolute despotism ; but 
 we may read a truer meaning into the term. Rome had often 
 guaranteed the liberty of Asiatic cities which she had wrested from 
 their overlord, she had once divided Macedonia into independent 
 Republics, she still maintained Achaea in a condition which allowed 
 a great deal of self-government to many of its towns, and the sys- 
 tem of Roman protectorate melted by insensible degrees into that 
 of provincial government. It is possible that her treatment of 
 the bequeathed communities might have been marked by greater 
 liberality than was actually shown, had not the dominion been 
 immediately convulsed by a war of independence. 
 
 A pretender had appeared from the house of the Attalids. He 
 could show no legitimate scutcheon ; but this was a small matter. 
 If there was a chance of a national outbreak, it could best be 
 fomented by a son of Eumenes. Aristonicus was believed to have 
 been born of an Ephesian concubine of the king.^ We know 
 nothing of his personality, but the history of his two years' conflict 
 with the Roman power proves him to have been no figure-head, but 
 a man of ability, energy and resource. A strictly national cause 
 was impossible in the kingdom of Pergamon ; for there was little 
 community of sentiment between the Greek coast line and the 
 barbaric interior. But the commercial prosperity of the one, and 
 the agricultural horrors of the other, might justify an appeal to 
 interest based on different grounds. At first Aristonicus tried 
 the sea. Without venturing at once into any of the great emporia, 
 he raised his standard at Leucae, a small but strongly defended 
 seaport lying almost midway between Phocaea and Smyrna, and 
 placed on a promontory just south of the point where the Hermus 
 issues into its gulf. Some of the leading towns seem to have 
 answered to his call.' But the Ephesians, not content with mere 
 repudiation, manned a fleet, sailed against him, and inflicted a 
 severe defeat on his naval force off Cyme.* Evidently the com- 
 
 ' Liv. Ep. lix. Cum testamento Attali regis legata populo Romano libera esse 
 deberet (Asia). Cf. pp. 175, 176, notes 5 and i. 
 
 ^Justin, xxxvi. 4. 6 Sed erat ex Eumene Aristonicus, non justo matrimonio, sed 
 ex paelice Ephesia, citharistae cujusdam filia, genitus, qui post mortem Attali velut 
 paternum regnum Asiam invasit. The epitomator of Livy (lix.) speaks of him as 
 " Eumenis filius " Strabo (xiv. x. 38) describes him as Sokuv rov yivoxis eXvai tov 
 
 'Florus i. 35 (ii. 20). * Strabo xiv. i. 38. 
 
 12 
 
178 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 131 
 
 mercial spirit had no liking for his schemes ; it saw in the Roman 
 protectorate the promise of a wider commerce and a broader civic 
 Freedom. Aristonicus moved into the interior, at first perhaps as a 
 refugee, but soon as a liberator. There were men here desperate 
 enough to answer to any call, and miserable enough to face any 
 danger. Sicily had shown that a slave-leader might become a 
 king ; Asia was now to prove that a king might come to his own 
 by heading an army of the outcasts.'' The call to freedom met 
 with an eager response, and the Pergamene prince was soon march- 
 ing to the coast at the head of " the citizens of the City of the 
 Sun," the ideal polity which these remnants of nationalities, without 
 countries and without homes, seem to have made their own.^ His 
 success was instantaneous. First the inland towns of Northern Lydia, 
 rhyatira, and Apollonis, fell into his hands.^ Organised resistance 
 was for the moment impossible. There were no Roman troops in 
 Asia, and the protected kings, to whom Rome had sent an urgent 
 summons, could not have mustered their forces with sufficient speed 
 to prevent Aristonicus sweeping towards the south. Here he 
 threatened the coast line of Ionia and Caria ; Colophon and 
 Myndus fell into his power; he must even have been able to 
 muster something of a fleet ; for the island of Samos was soon 
 joined to his possessions.* It is probable that the co-operation of 
 the slave populations in these various cities added greatly to his 
 success. His conquests may have been somewhat sporadic, and 
 there is no reason to suppose that he commanded all the country 
 included in the wide range of his captured cities and extending 
 From Thyatira to the coast and from the Gulf of Hermus to that 
 jf lassus. The forces which he could dispose of seem to have been 
 sufficiently engaged in holding their southern conquests ; there is 
 ao trace of his controlling the country north of Phocaea or of his 
 3ven attempting an attack on Pergamon the capital of his kingdom. 
 His army, however, must have been increasing in dimensions as 
 
 * Diod. xxxiv. 2. 26 rh irapaitX-liffiov Se (to the slave revolt in Sicily) yiyore Kol 
 cori tV 'A<rlav Kara, roiis airoiis xaipois, 'Apia-TovlKov /i^v iivrnroiria-a/ifvov Trjs ^ii 
 rpoffriKoitrris ffaaXdas, twv S^ SoiXwv Sio rhs 4k tSv Seairorav KaKovxias avvaTrovoiiaa- 
 Uvtov 4Keiytii Ka\ fieydKois St.Tvxiifiaat •jroWh.s -TrSKeis irfpt$a\6vT<ji)j/, 
 
 " Strabo I.e. els Se t)iv fiecriyatav i,vii)y ^Bpotire S(& rax^av irXijfloj airipav tc 
 ivBptSi'troiv Ka\ SoiXwy iir* 4\€vd€pia KaTaKeK\7]fi€ywv, ots 'HKtoiroKiras iKaKetre. For the 
 new that Heliopolis was a merely ideal city deriving its name from the sun-god of 
 Syria, see Mommsen Hist, of Rome bk. iv. c. i ; Biicher op. cit. pp. 105 foil. For 
 :he hopes of divine deliverance which pervade the slave revolts, see Mahaily in 
 Hermathena xvi. i8go, and cf. p. 89. 
 
 ' Strabo I.e. ' Florus i. 35 (ii. 20). 
 
131 B.C.] WAR WITH ARISTONICUS 179 
 
 well as in experience. Thracian mercenaries were added to his 
 servile bands,^ and the movement had assumed dimensions which 
 convinced the Romans that this was not a tumult but a war. 
 Their earlier efforts were apparently based on the belief that local 
 forces would be sufficient to stem the rising. Even after the revolt 
 of Aristonicus was known, they persisted in the idea that the com- 
 mission, which would doubtless in any case have been sent out to 
 inspect the new dependency, was an adequate means of meeting 
 the emergency. This commission of five,^ which included Scipio 
 Nasica,* journeyed to Asia only to find that they were attending on 
 a civil war, not on a judicial dispute, and that the country which 
 was to be organised required to be conquered. The client kings of 
 Bithjmia, Paphlagonia, Cappadocia and Pontus, all eager for praise 
 or for reward, had rallied loyally to the cause of Rome ; * but the 
 auxiliary forces that they brought were quite unable to pacify a 
 country now in the throes of a servile war, and they lacked a com- 
 mander-in-chief who would direct a series of ordered operations. 
 Orders were given for the raising of a regular army, and in accord- 
 ance with the traditions of the State this force would be commanded 
 by a consul. 
 
 The heads of the State for this year were Lucius Valerius Flaccus 
 and Publius Licinius Crassus. Each was covetous of the attractive 
 command ; for the Asiatic campaigns of the past had been easy, and 
 there was no reason to suppose that a pretender who headed a 
 multitude of slaves would be more difficult to vanquish than a king 
 like Antiochus who had had at his call all the forces of Asia. The 
 chances of a triumph were becoming scarcer ; here w£is one that was 
 almost within the commander's grasp. But there were even greater 
 prizes in store. The happy conqueror would be the first to touch 
 the treasure of the Attalids, and secure for the State a prize which 
 had already been the source of political strife ; he would reap for 
 himself and his army a royal harvest from the booty taken in the 
 field or from the sack of towns, and he would almost indubitably 
 remain in the conquered country to organise, perhaps to govern for 
 years, the wealthiest domain that had fallen to the lot of Rome, 
 
 1 Val. Max. iii. 2. 12. ' Strabo xiv. l. 38. ' P. 148. 
 
 * Strabo I.e. €vB)js a'l re wiJi.fts eire/xtf/av wKtjBos, koI NiKO/i^Srjs d BiBwhs iireKoifni<re 
 /col o( ray KaviraSiKav /SoitiAeij. Eutrop. iv. 20 P. Licinius Crassus infinita regum 
 habuit auxilia. Nam et Bithyniae rex Nicomedes Romanos juvit et Mithridates 
 Ponticus, cum quo bellum postea gravissimum fuit, et Ariarathes Cappadox et 
 Pylaemenes Paphlagon. The Pontic king was Mithradates Euergetes, not Eupator. 
 
180 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 131 
 
 and to treat like a king with the monarchs of the protected states 
 around. These attractions were sufficient to overcome the religious 
 scruples of both the candidates ; for it chanced that both Crassus 
 and Flaccus were hampered by religious law from assuming a com- 
 mand abroad. The one was chief pontiff and the other the Flamen 
 of Mars ; and, if the objections were felt or pressed, the obvious 
 candidate for the Asiatic campaign was Scipio Aemilianus, the only 
 tried general of the time. But Scipio's chances were small. The 
 nature of the struggle did not seem to demand extraordinary genius, 
 and Scipio, although necessary in an emergency, could not be 
 allowed to snatch the legitimate prizes of the holders of office.^ So 
 the contest lay between the pontiff and the priest. The contro- 
 versy was unequal, for, while the pontiff was the disciplinary head 
 of the state religion, the Flamen was in matters of ritual and in 
 the rules appertaining to the observance of religious law subject to 
 his jurisdiction. Crassus restrained the ardour of his colleague by 
 announcing that he would impose a fine if the Flamen neglected his 
 religious duties by quitting the shores of Italy. The pecuniary 
 penalty was only intended as a means of stating a test case to be 
 submitted, as similar cases had been twice before,^ to the decision of 
 the people. Flaccus entered an appeal against the fine, and the 
 judgment of the Comitia was invited. The verdict of the people 
 was that the fine should be remitted, but that the Flamen should 
 obey the pontiff. ' As Crassus had no superior in the religious 
 world, it was difficult, if not impossible, for the objections against 
 his own tenure of the foreign command to be pressed.* The people, 
 perhaps grateful for the Gracchan sympathies of Crassus, felt no 
 scruple about dismissing their pontiff to a foreign land, and readily 
 voted him the conduct of the war. 
 
 The story of the campaign which followed is confined to a few 
 personal anecdotes connected with the remarkable man who led the 
 Roman armies. The learning of Crassus was attested by the fact 
 that, when he held a court in Asia, he could not only deliver his 
 
 1 Cic. Phil. xi. 8. i8 Populus Romanus consuli potius Crasso quam privato 
 Africano bellum gerendum dedit. 
 
 "In B.C. i8g (Liv. xxxvii. 51) and 180 (Liv. xl. 42). 
 
 ' Cic. I.e. Rogatus est populus quem id bellum gerere placeret. Crassus consul, 
 pontifex maximus, Flacco coUegae, flamini Martiali, multam dixit si a sacris disces- 
 sisset ; quam multam populus remisit, pontifici tamen flaminem parere jussit. 
 
 ^ Cf. Liv. Ef. lix. Adversus eum (Aristonicum) P. Licinius Crassus consul, cum 
 idem pontifex maximus esset, quod numquam antea factum erat, extra Italiam 
 profectus . . . 
 
130 B.C.] DEATH OF CRASSUS 181 
 
 judgments in Greek, but adapt his discourse to the dialect of the 
 different litigants.^ His discipline was severe but indiscriminating ; 
 it displayed the rigour of the erudite martinet, not the insight of 
 the born commander. Once he needed a piece of timber for a 
 battering ram, and wrote to the architect of a friendly town to 
 send the larger of two pieces which he had seen there. The trained 
 eye of the expert immediately saw that the smaller was the better 
 suited to the purpose ; and this was accordingly sent. The intelli- 
 gence of the architect was his ruin. The unhappy man was stripped 
 and scourged, on the ground that the exercise of judgment by a 
 subordinate was utterly subversive of a commander's authority.^ 
 Another account represents such generalship as he possessed as 
 having been diverted from its true aim by the ardour with which, 
 in spite of his enormous wealth, he followed up the traces of the 
 spoils of war.^ But his death, which took place at the beginning 
 of the second year of his command,* was not unworthy of one who 
 had held the consulship. He was conducting operations in the 
 territory between Elaea and Smyrna, probably in preparation for 
 the siege of Leucae,* still a stronghold of the pretender. Here he 
 was suddenly surprised by the enemy. His hastily formed ranks 
 were shattered, and the Romans were soon in full retreat for some 
 friendly city of the north. But their lines were broken by uneven 
 ground and by the violence of the pursuit. The general was de- 
 tached from the main body of his army and overtaken by a troop 
 of Thracian horse. His captors were probablyignorant of the value 
 of their prize ; and, even had they known that they held in their 
 hands the leader of the Roman host, the device of Crassus might 
 still have saved him from the triumph of a rebel prince and shame- 
 ful exposure to the insults of a servile crowd. He thrust his riding 
 whip into the eye of one of his captors. Frenzied with pain, the 
 man buried his dagger in the captive's side.' 
 
 The death of Crassus created hardly a pause in the conduct of 
 the campaign ; for Marcus Perpema, the consul for the year, was 
 soon in the field and organising vigorous measures against Aristoni- 
 cus. The details of the campaign have not been preserved, but we 
 
 * Quinctil. Inst. Or. xi. 2. 50. ^ Gell. i. 13. 
 ' Intentior Attalicae praedae quam bello (Justin, xxxvi. 4. 8). 
 
 * Cf. Eutrop. iv. 20 Perperna, consul Romanus (130 B.C.) qui successor Crasso 
 veniebat. 
 
 ''Val. Max. iii. 2. 12; Strabo xiv. i. 38. 
 
 'Val. Max. I.e. Cf. Ores. v. 10; Florus i. 34 (ii. 20). Eutropius (iv. 20) states 
 that Crassus's head was taken to Axistonicus, his body buried at Smyrna. 
 
182 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 130 
 
 are told that the first serious encounter resulted in a decisive victory 
 for the Roman arms.^ The pretender fled, and was finally hunted 
 down to the southern part of his dominions. His last stand was 
 made at Stratonicea in Caria. The town was blockaded and re- 
 duced by famine, and Aristonicus surrendered unconditionally to 
 the Roman power.^ Perperna reserved the captive for his triumph, 
 he visited Pergamon and placed on shipboard the treasures of At- 
 talus for transport to Rome ; ' by these decisive acts he was proving 
 that the war was over, for yet a third eager consul was straining 
 every nerve to get his share of glory and of gain. Manius Aquillius 
 was hastening to Asia to assume a command which might still be 
 interpreted as a reality ; * the longer he allowed his predecessor to 
 remain, the more unsubstantial would his own share in the enterprise 
 become. A triumph would be the prize of the man who had fin- 
 ished the war, and perhaps even Aristonicus's capture need not be 
 interpreted as its close. A scene of angry recrimination might 
 have been the result of an encounter between the rival commanders ; 
 but this was avoided by Perperna's sudden death at Pergamon.^ 
 It is, possible that Aristonicus was saved the shame of a Roman 
 triumph, although one tradition affirms that he was reserved for 
 the pageant which three years later commemorated Aquillius's suc- 
 cess in Asia.^ But he did not escape the doom which the State 
 pronounced on rebel princes, and was strangled in the Tullianum 
 by the orders of the senate.' 
 
 Aquillius found in his province sufficient material for the pro- 
 longation of the war. Although the fall of Aristonicus had doubt- 
 less brought with it the dissolution of the regular armies of the 
 rebels, yet isolated cities, probably terrorised by revolted slaves who 
 could expect no mercy from the conqueror, still offisred a desperate 
 resistance. In his eagerness to end the struggle the Roman com- 
 mander is said to have shed the last vestiges of international 
 morality, and the reduction of towns by the poisoning of the 
 streams which provided them with water,* while it inflicted an 
 
 ' Justin, xxxvi. 4 Prima congressione Aristonicum superatum in potestatem 
 suam redegit. 
 
 2 Eutrop. iv. 20. Cf.hiv.Ep.lix. 'Justin. Z.c. 
 
 * Justin, xxxvi. 4 M'. Aquilius consul ad eripiendum Aristonicum Perpernae, 
 veluti sui potius triumphi munus esse deberet, festinata velocitate contendit. 
 
 ' Eutrop. iv. 20 ; Justin, xxxvi. 4. ' Vellei. ii. 4. 
 
 'Eutrop. I.e. Aristonicus jussu senatus Romae in carcere strangulatus est. 
 According to Strabo (xiv. 1. 38) he had been sent to Rome by Perperna. 
 
 ^Florus i. 35 (ii. 20) Aquillius Asiatici belli reliquias confecit, mixtis-nefas- 
 veneno fontibus ad deditionem quarundam urbium. Quae res ut maturam ita 
 
129 B.C.] THE PROVINCE OF ASIA 183 
 
 indelible stain on Roman honour, was perhaps defended as an 
 inevitable accompaniment of an irregular servile war. The work 
 of organisation had been begun even before that of pacification 
 had been completed. The State had taken Perperna's success seri- 
 ously enough to send with Aquillius ten commissioners for the 
 regulation of the affairs of the new province,' and they seem to 
 have entered on their task from the date of their an-ival.^ There 
 was no reason for delay, since the kingdom of Pergamon had tech- 
 nically become a province with the death of Attains the Third.' 
 The Ephesians indeed even antedated this event, and adopted an 
 era which commenced with the September of the year 134,* the 
 reason for this anticipation being the usual Asiatic custom of be- 
 ginning the civil year with the autumnal equinox. The real point 
 of departure of this new era of Ephesus was either the death of At- 
 tains or the victory of the city over the fleet of Aristonicus. But, 
 though the work of organisation could be entered on at once, its 
 completion was a long and laborious task, and Aquillius himself 
 seems to have spent three years in Asia.^ The limits of the pro- 
 vince, which, like that of Africa, received the name of the continent 
 to which it belonged, required to be defined with reference to future 
 possibilities and the rights of neighbouring kingdoms ; the taxation 
 of the country had to be adjusted ; and the privileges of the dif- 
 ferent cities proportioned to their capacity or merits. The law of 
 Aquillius remained in essence the charter of the province of Asia 
 down to imperial times, although subsequent modifications were 
 introduced by Sulla and Pompeius. The new inheritance of the 
 Romans comprised almost all the portion of Asia Minor lying north 
 of the Taurus and west of Bithynia, Galatia and Cappadocia. 
 Even Caria, which had been declared free after the war with Per- 
 
 infamem fecit victoriam, quippe cum contra fas deum moresque majorum medica- 
 minibus impuris in id tempus sacrosancta Romana arma violasset. 
 
 ^ Strabo xiv. I. 38 Mdvios S' *A/ctJxX(os, hreKQtiov Vnaros fier^ SeKct wpeff^evTay, 
 5ieToJe riiv iirapxlav ei'j rh vSv en crv/ifieyov rijs Tro\tTeias (Tx^^a. 
 
 *An inscription with the words Mi{v[i]os 'AKii[A]ioj Mo>'[i]ou vnaTo[s] "Pu/iaiuv 
 has been found near Tralles. It probably belongs to a milestone (C. I. L. i. n. 557 
 = C. I. Gr. ii. 2920). 
 
 ' Where the rights of city-states were in question the lines of demarcation be- 
 tween " province " and " protectorate " were necessarily vague. Even a protectorate 
 over small political units would demand organisation and justify the appointment 
 of a commission. 
 
 * The evidence is furnished by a Cistophorus of 77 B.C. struck at Ephesus. See 
 Waddington Pastes p. 674. 
 
 " His triumph is dated to 126 B.C. (628 a.u.c, 627 according to the reckoning of 
 the Fasti). See Fasti triumph, in C. I. L. i. 
 
184 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 129-126 
 
 seus, seems to have again fallen under the sway of the Attalid 
 kings. The monarchy also included the Thracian Chersonese and 
 most of the Aegean islands.^ But the whole of this territory was 
 not included in the new province of Asia. The Chersonese was 
 annexed to the province of Macedonia,'' a small district of Caria 
 known as the Peraea and situated opposite the island of Rhodes, be- 
 came or remained the property of the latter state; in the same 
 neighbourhood the port and town of Telmissus, which had been 
 given to Eumenes after the defeat of Antiochus, were restored to the 
 Lycian confederation.^ With characteristic caution Rome did not 
 care to retain direct dominion over the eastern portions of her new 
 possessions, some of which, such as Isauria, Pisidia and perhaps the 
 eastern portion of Cilicia, may have rendered a very nominal obedi- 
 ence to the throne of the Attalids. She kept the rich, civilised 
 and easily governed Hellenic lands for her own, but the barbarian 
 interior, as too great and distant a burden for the home government, 
 was destined to enrich her loyal client states. Aquillius and his 
 commissioners must have received definite instructions not to claim 
 for Rome any territory lying east of Mysia, Lydia and Caria ; but 
 they seem to have had no instructions as to how the discarded ter- 
 ritories were to be disposed of. The consequence was that the 
 kings of the East were soon begging for territory from a Roman 
 commander and his assistants. Lycaonia was the reward of proved 
 service ; it was given to the sons of Ariarathes the Fifth, King of 
 Cappadocia, who had fallen in the war.* Cilicia is also said to have 
 accompanied this gift, but this no man's land must have been re- 
 garded both by donor and recipient as but a nominal boon. For 
 Phrygia proper, or the Greater Phrygia as this country south of 
 Bithynia and west of Galatia was called,* there were two claimants.^ 
 The kings of Pontus and Bithynia competed for the prize, and 
 each supported his petition by a reference to the history of the 
 past. Nicomedes of Bithynia could urge that his grandsire 
 Prusias had maintained an attitude of friendly neutrality during 
 Rome's struggle with Antiochus. The Pontic king, Mithradates 
 Euergetes, advanced a more specious pretext of hereditary right. 
 
 1 Waddington Pastes pp. 662 foil. Caria belongs to the province of Asia in 76 B.C. 
 (Le Bas- Waddington, no. 409). 
 
 ^ It is dependent on this province in the time of Cicero (in Pis. 35. 86), 
 
 ' Strabo xiv. 3. 4. 
 
 * Justin, xxxvii. i. Cf. Bergmann in Philologus 1847 p. 642. 
 
 " Forbiger Handb. der Alt. Geogr. ii. p. 338. 
 
 ' Reinach Mithridate Eupator p. 43. 
 
129-126 B.C.] THE PROVINCE OF ASIA 185 
 
 Phrygia, he alleged, had been his mother's dowry, and had been 
 given her by her brother, Seleucus Callinicus, King of Syria.^ 
 We do not know what considerations influenced the judgment of 
 Aquillius in preferring the claim of Mithradates. He may have 
 considered that the Pontic kingdom, as the more distant, was the 
 less dangerous, and he may have sought to attract the loyalty of 
 its monarch by benefits such as had already been heaped on 
 Nicomedes of Bithynia. His political enemies and all who in sub- 
 sequent times resisted the claim of the Pontic kings, alleged that he 
 had put Phrygia up to auction and that Mithradates had paid the 
 higher price; this transaction doubtless figured in the charges of 
 corruption, on which he was accused and acquitted : and, doubtful 
 as the verdict which absolved him seemed to his contemporaries 
 and successors, we have no proof that the desire for gain was the 
 sole or even the main cause of his decision. Had he considered 
 that the investiture of Nicomedes would have been more acceptable 
 to the home government, the King of Bithynia would probably 
 have been willing to pay an adequate sum for his advocacy. He 
 may have been guilty of a wilful blunder in alienating Phrygia at 
 all. The senate soon discovered his and its own mistake. The 
 disputed territory was soon seen to be worthy of Roman occupation. 
 Strategically it was of the utmost importance for the security of 
 the Asiatic coast, as commanding the heads of the river valleys 
 which stretched westward to the Aegean, while its thickly strewn 
 townships, which opened up possibilities of inland trade, placed it 
 on a different plane to the desolate Lycaonia and Cilicia. It is 
 possible that the capitalist class, on whose support the senate was 
 now relying for the maintenance of the political equilibrium in the 
 capital, may have joined in the protest against Aquillius's mistaken 
 generosity. But, though the government rapidly decided to rescind 
 the decision of its commissioners, it had not the strength to settle 
 the matter once for all by taking Phrygia for itself. A decree of the 
 people was still technically superior to a resolution of the senate ; 
 it was always possible for dissentients to urge that the people must 
 be consulted on these great questions of international interest ; and 
 Phrygia became, like Pergamon a short time before, the sport of 
 party politics. The rival kings transferred their claims, and pos- 
 sibly their pecuniary offers, from the province to the capital, and 
 
 ' Justin, xxxviii. 5. 
 
186 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 123-122 
 
 the network of intrigue which soon shrouded the question was 
 brutally exhibited by Caius Gracchus when, in his first or second 
 tribunate, he urged the people to reject an Aufeian law, which bore 
 on the dispute. " You will find, citizens," he urged, " that each 
 one of us has his price. Even I am not disinterested, although it 
 happens that the particular object which I have in view is not 
 money, but good repute and honour. But the advocates on both 
 sides of this question are looking to something else. Those who 
 urge you to reject this bill are expecting hard cash from Nicomedes ; 
 those who urge its acceptance are looking for the price which 
 Mithradates will pay for what he calls his own ; this will be their 
 reward. And, as for the members of the government who maintain 
 a studious reserve on this question, they are the keenest bargainers 
 of all ; their silence simply means that they are being paid by every 
 one and cheating every one." This cynical description of the 
 political situation was pointed by a quotation of the retort of 
 Demades to the successful tragedian " Are you so proud of having 
 got a talent for speaking ? why, I got ten talents from the king for 
 holding my peace "} This sketch was probably more witty than 
 true ; condemnation, when it becomes universal, ceases to be con- 
 vincing, and cynicism, when it exceeds a certain degree, is merely 
 the revelation of a diseased or aflfected mental attitude. Gracchus 
 was too good a pleader to be a fair observer. But the suspicion 
 revealed by the diatribe may have been based on fact ; the envoys 
 of the kings may have brought something weightier than words or 
 documents, only to find that the balance of their gilded arguments 
 was so perfect that the original objection to Phrygia being given 
 to any Eastern potentate was the only issue which could still be 
 supported with conviction. Yet the government still declined to 
 annex. Its hesitancy was probably due to its unwillingness to se€ 
 a new Eastern province handed over to the equestrian tax-farmers, 
 to whom Caius Gracchus had just given the province of Asia. The 
 fall of Gracchus made an independent judgment by the peopk 
 impossible, and, even had it been practicable for the Comitia tc 
 decide, their judgment must have been so perplexed by rival 
 interests and arguments that they would probably have acquiesced 
 
 /C. Gracchus ap. Gell. xi. lo. Cf. Plin. H. N. xxxiii. ii. 148 Asia primuir 
 devicta luxuriam misit in Italiam ... At eadem Asia donata multo etiam gravius 
 adflixit mores, inutiliorque victoria ilia hereditas Attalo rege mortuo fuit. Tun 
 enim haec emendi Romae in auctionibus regiis verecundia exempta est. 
 
129 B.C.] THE PROVINCE OF ASIA 187 
 
 in the equivocal decision of the senate. This decision was that 
 Phrygia should be free.^ It was to be open to the Roman capitalist 
 as a trader, but not as a collector ; it was not to be the scene of 
 official corruption or regal aggrandisement. It was to be an 
 aggregate of protected states possessing no central government of 
 its own. Yet some central control was essential ; and this was 
 perhaps secured by attaching Phrygia to the province of Asia in 
 the same loose condition of dependence in which Achaea had been 
 attached to Macedonia. In one other particular the settlement of 
 Aquillius was not final. We shall find that motives of maritime 
 security soon forced Rome to create a province of Cilicia, and it 
 seems that for this purpose a portion of the gift which had been 
 just made to the kings of Cappadocia was subsequently resumed by 
 Rome. The old Pergamene possessions in Western Cilicia were 
 probably joined to some towns of Pamphylia to form the kernel of 
 the new province. When Rome had divested herself of the super- 
 fluous accessories of her bequest, a noble residue still remained. 
 Mysia, Lydia and Caria with their magnificent coast cities, rich in 
 art, and inexhaustible in wealth, formed, with most of the islands 
 off the coast,^ that " corrupting " province which became the fav- 
 ourite resort of the refined and the desperate resource of the needy. 
 Its treasures were to add a new word to the Roman vocabulary of 
 wealth ; ' its luxury was to give a new stimulus to the art of living 
 and to add a new craving or two to the insatiable appetite for 
 enjoyment ; while the servility of its population was to create a 
 new type of Roman ruler in the man who for one glorious year 
 wielded the power of a Pergamene despot, without the restraint of 
 kingly traditions or the continence induced by an assured tenure 
 of rule. 
 
 The western world witnessed the beginning of an equally re- 
 markable change. On both sides of Italy accident was laying the 
 foundation for a steady advance to the North, and forcing the 
 Romans into contact with peoples, whose subjection would never 
 have been sought except from purely defensive motives. The 
 lapudes and Histri at the head of the Adriatic were the objects of 
 
 ' Ramsay, Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia i. 2, pp. 423, 762 ; Reinach Mith- 
 ridate Bupator p. 457. 
 
 ^ For the evidence as to the islands, see Waddington Pastes I.e. 
 • ' Regni attalici opes (Justin, xxxviii. 7. 7) ; Attalicae conditiones (Hor. Od. i. 
 I. 12); Attalicae vestes (Prop. iii. 18. 19) etc. (from Ihne Rom. Gesch. v., p. 76). 
 
188 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 126-125 
 
 a campaign of the consul Tuditanus,^ while four years later Fulvius 
 Flaccus commenced operations amongst the Gauls and Ligurians 
 beyond the Alps,^ which were to find their completion seventy-five 
 years later in the conquests of Caesar. But neither of these enter- 
 prises can be intelligently considered in isolation ; their significance 
 lies in the necessity of their renewal, and even the proximate results 
 to which they led would carry us far beyond the limits of the 
 period which we are considering. The events completely enclosed 
 within these limits are of subordinate importance. They are a war 
 in Sardinia and the conquest of the Balearic isles. The former 
 engaged the attention of Lucius Aurelius Orestes as consul in 126 
 and as proconsul in the following year.^ It is perhaps only the 
 facts that a consul was deemed necessary for the administration of 
 the island, and that he attained a triumph for his deeds,* that justify 
 us in calling this Sardinian enterprise a war. It was a punitive ex- 
 pedition undertaken against some restless tribes, but it was rendered 
 arduous by the unhealthiness of the climate and the difficulty of 
 procuring adequate supplies for the suffering Roman troops.* The 
 annexation of the Balearic islands with their thirty thousand in- 
 habitants ^ may have been regarded as a geographical necessity, and 
 certainly resulted in a military advantage. Although the Cartha- 
 ginians had had frequent intercourse with these islands and a port 
 of the smaller of the two still bears a Punic name,' they had done 
 little to civilise the native inhabitants. Perhaps the value attached 
 to the military gifts of the islanders contributed to preserve them 
 in a state of nature ; for culture might have diminished that mar- 
 vellous skill with the sling,® which was once at the service of the 
 Carthaginian, and afterwards of the Roman, armies. But, in spite 
 of their prowess, the Baliares were not a fierce people. They would 
 allow no gold or silver to enter their country,* probably in order 
 
 ' Liv. Ep. lix ; App. Illyr. lo, Bell. Civ. i. ig ; Plin. H. N. iii. 19. 129 ; 
 Fasti triumph. C. Sempronius C. F. C. N. Tuditan. a. dcxxiv cos. de lapudiljus k. 
 Oct. 
 
 ^ Liv. Bp. Ix ; Florus i. 37 (iii. 2) ; Obsequens 90 (28) ; Ammian. xv. 12. 5. 
 
 ' Liv. Ep. Ix ; Plut. C. Gracch. 1. 2. 
 
 * Fasti Triumph. L. Aurelius L. F. L. N. Orestes pro an. dcxxxi cos. ex Sar- 
 dinia vi Idus Dec. (122 B.C.) 
 
 ^ Plut. C. Gracch. 2. « Diod. v. 17. 2. 
 
 'Besides Mago (Mahon), Bocchori and Guiuntum on Majorca, lamo on 
 Minorca are supposed to be Punic names. See Hiibner in Pauly-Wissowa Real. 
 Enc. p. 2823. On the islands generally (Baliares, later Baleares of the Romans, 
 ru/jK^o-iai, BaXiapeis of the Greeks) see the same author's Romische Heerschaft in 
 Westeuropa 208 ff. 
 
 ' Strabo iii. v. 1. ' Diod. v. 17. 4. 
 
123 B.C.] CONQUEST OF THE BALIARES 189 
 
 that no temptation might be offered to pirates or rapacious 
 traders.^ Their civilisation represented the matriarchal stage ; their 
 marriage customs expressed the survival of polyandric union ; they 
 were tenacious of the lives of their women, and even invested the 
 money which they gained on military service in the purchase of 
 female captives.' They made excellent mercenaries, but shunned 
 either war or commerce with the neighbouring peoples, and the 
 only excuse for Roman aggression was that a small proportion of 
 the peaceful inhabitants had lent themselves to piratical pursuits.^ 
 The expedition was led by the consul Quintus Caecilius Metellus and 
 resulted in a facile conquest. The ships of the invaders were pro- 
 tected by hides stretched above the decks to guard against the 
 cloud of well-directed missiles ; * but, once a landing had been 
 effected, the natives, clad only in skins, with small shields and light 
 javelins as their sole defensive weapons, could offer no effective re- 
 sistance at close quarters and were easily put to rout. For the 
 security of the new possessions Metellus adopted the device, still 
 rare in the case of transmarine dependencies, of planting colonies on 
 the conquered land. Palma and PoUentia were founded, as town- 
 ships of Roman citizens, on the larger island ; the new settlers 
 being drawn from Romans who were induced to leave their homes 
 in the south of Spain.^ This unusual effort in the direction of 
 Romanisation was rendered necessary by the wholly barbarous 
 character of the country ; and the introduction into the Balearic isles 
 of the Latin language and culture was a better justification than 
 the easy victory for Metellus's triumph and his assumption of the 
 surname of " Baliaricus ".* The islands flourished under Roman rule. 
 They produced wine and wheat in abundance and were famed for 
 the excellence of their mules. But their chief value to Rome must 
 have lain in their excellent harbours, and in the welcome addition 
 to the light-armed forces of the empire which was found in their 
 warlike inhabitants. 
 
 1 Hiibner in Pauly-Wissowa Real. Enc. I.e. 
 
 'They also purchased wine. They were so ^iKoyivai. that they would give 
 pirates three or four men as a ransom for one woman (Diod. v. 17). 
 
 'Strabo I.e. 01 KaTOMOvvTis nlfnii/aTot . . . Kaxoipyaji 34 tivuv o\iyuv Koivaylas 
 <rv(rTi\<rait.4vaiv Trphs rohs iv rois irtXiyeai Xpffror, SiE/SX'^flrio'ox Smavres, Kal Sic^rj 
 MeTtWoj eV outous d BoKtapiichs irpoirayopsvBels. 
 
 * Strabo I.e. , 
 
 'Strabo I.e. eia-liyaye 8e (MeVfAAos) iirolxovs Tpi(rxiA.(ouj Twy 4k rrjs 'Ifi-npias 
 'Vojutticoy. 
 
 'Fasti Triumph. (121 B.C.) Q. Caecilius Q. F. Q. N. Metellus a. tcTucxii 
 Baliaric. procos. de Baliarib. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 ROME had lived for nine years in a feverish atmosphere of 
 projected reform ; yet not a single question raised by her 
 bolder spirits had received its final answer. The agrarian 
 legislation had indeed run a successful course ; yet the very hind- 
 rance to its operation at a critical moment had, in the eyes of the 
 discontented, turned success into failure and left behind a bitter 
 feeling of resentment at the treacherous dexterity of the govern- 
 ment. The men, in whose imagined interests the people had been 
 defrauded of their coveted land, had by a singular irony of fortune 
 been driven ignominiously from Rome and were now the victims of 
 graver suspicions on the part of the government than on that of the 
 Roman mob. The effect of the late senatorial diplomacy had been 
 to create twro hostile classes instead of one. From both these classes 
 the aristocrats drew their soldiers for the constant campaigns that 
 the needs of Empire involved : and both were equally resentful of 
 the burdens and abuses of military service, for which no one was 
 officially directed to suggest a cure. The poorest classes had been 
 given the ballot when they wanted food and craved a less precarious 
 sustenance than that aiForded by the capricious benevolence of the 
 rich. The friction between the senatorial government and the upper 
 middle class was probably increasing. The equites must have been 
 casting hungry eyes at the new province of Asia and asking them- 
 selves whether commercial interests were always to be at the mercy 
 of the nobility as represented by the senate, the provincial adminis- 
 trators and the courts of justice. It was believed that governors, 
 commissioners and senators were being bought by the gold of kings, 
 and that mines of wealth were being lost to the honest capitalist 
 through the utter con-uption of the governing few. The final 
 threats of Tiberius Gracchus were still in the air, and a vast un- 
 worked material lay ready to the hand of the aspiring agitator. In 
 
 (190) 
 
124 B.C.] CAIUS GRACCHUS 191 
 
 an ancient monarchy or aristocracy of the feudal type, where abuses 
 have become sanctified by tradition, or in a modern nation or state 
 with its splendid capacity for inertia due to the habitual somnolence 
 of the majority of its electors, such questions may vaguely suggest 
 themselves for half a century without ever receiving an answer. 
 But Rome could only avoid a revolution by discarding her con- 
 stitution. The sovereignty of the people was a thesis which the 
 senate dared not attack ; and this sovereignty had for the first time 
 in Roman history become a stem reality. The city in its vastness 
 now dominated the country districts : and the sovereign, now large, 
 now small, now wild, now sober, but ever the sovereign in spite of 
 his kaleidoscopic changes, could be summoned at any moment to 
 the Forum. Democratic agitation was becoming habitual. It is 
 true that it was also becoming unsafe. But a man who could hold 
 the wolf by the ears for a year or two might work a revolution in 
 Rome and perhaps be her virtual master. 
 
 It was no difficult task to find the man, for there was one who 
 was marked out by birth, traditions, temperament and genius as 
 the fittest exponent of a cause which, in spite of its intricate com- 
 plications that baffled the analysis of the ordinary mind, could still 
 in its essential features be described as the cause of the people. It 
 is indeed singular that, in a political civilisation so unkind as the 
 Roman to the merits of youth, hopes should be roused and fear 
 inspired by a man so young and inexperienced as Caius Gracchus. 
 But the popular fancy is often caught by the immaturity that is as 
 yet unhampered by caution and undimmed by disillusion, and by 
 the fresh young voice that has not yet been attuned to the poor 
 half-truths which are the stock-in-trade of the worldly wise. And 
 those who were about Gracchus must soon have seen that the traces 
 of youth were to be found only in his passion, his frankness, his 
 impetuous vigour ; no discerning eye could fail to be aware of the 
 cool, calculating, intellect which unconsciously used emotion as its 
 mask, of a mind that could map and plan a political campaign in 
 perfect self-confident security, view the country as a whole and yet 
 master every detail, and then leave the issue of the fight to burn- 
 ing words and passionate appeals. This supreme combination of 
 emotional and artistic gifts, which made Gracchus so irresistible as 
 a leader, was strikingly manifested in his oratory. We are told of 
 the intensity of his mien, the violence of his gestures, the restless- 
 ness that forced him to pace the Rostra and pluck the toga from 
 
192 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 124 
 
 his shoulder, of the language that roused his hearers to an almost 
 intolerable tension of pity or indignation.^ Nature had made him 
 the sublimest, because the most unconscious of actors ; eyes, tone, 
 gesture all answered the bidding of the magic words.^ Sometimes 
 the emotion was too highly strung ; the words would become coarser, 
 the voice harsher, the faultless sentences would grow confused, until 
 the soft tone of a flute blown by an attendant slave would recall his 
 mind to reason and his voice to the accustomed pitch.^ Men con- 
 trasted him with his gentle and stately brother Tiberius, endowed 
 with all the quiet dignity of the Roman orator, and diverging only 
 from the pure and polished exposition of his cause to awake a feel- 
 ing of commiseration for the wrongs which he unfolded.^ Tiberius 
 played but on a single chord ; Caius on many. Tiberius appealed 
 to noble instincts, Caius appealed to all, and his Protean manifesta- 
 tions were a symbol of a more complex creed, a wider knowledge of 
 humanity, a greater recklessness as to his means, and of that burning 
 consciousness, which Tiberius had not, that there were personal 
 wrongs to be avenged as well as political ideas to be realised. To 
 a narrow mind the vendetta is simply an act of justice ; to an in- 
 tellectual hater such as Gracchus it is also a woik of reason. The 
 folly of crime but exaggerates its grossness, and the hatred for the 
 criminal is merged in an exalting and inspirmg contempt. Yet the 
 man thus attuned to passion was, what every great orator must be, 
 a painful student ot the most delicate of arts. The language of 
 the successful demagogue seldom becomes the study of the schools ; 
 yet so it was with Gracchus. The orators of a Jater age, whose 
 critical appreciation was purer than their practice, could find no 
 better guide to the aspirant for forensic fame than the speeches 
 of the turbulent tribune. Cicero dwells on the fulness and rich- 
 ness of his flow of words, the grandeur and dignity of the ex- 
 pression, the acuteness of the thought.* They seemed to some to 
 lack the finishing touch ; ^ which is equivalent to saying that with 
 
 " Plut. Ti. Gracch. 2. 
 
 'Quae sic ab illo acta esse constabat oculis, voce, gestu, inimici ut lacrimas 
 tenere non possent (Cic. de Or. iii. 56. 214). 
 
 "Plat.l.c. 
 
 *Cic. Brut. 33. 125 Sed ecce in manibus vir et praestantissimo ingenio et 
 flagranti studio et doctus a puero, C. Gracchus . . . Grandis est verbis, sapiens 
 sententiis, genere toto gravis. His " impetus " is dwelt on in Tac. de Orat. 26. 
 
 " Cic. Brut. 33. 126 Manus extrema non accessit operibus ejus : praeclare in- 
 choata multa, perfecta non plane. Cf. Tac. de Orat. 18 Sic Catoni seni comparatus 
 C. Gracchus plenior et uberior ; sic Graccho politior et ornatior Crassus. 
 
124 B.C.] CAIUS GRACCHUS 193 
 
 him oratory had not degenerated into rhetoric. The few fragments 
 that survive awaken our wonder, first for their marvellous simplicity 
 and clearness : then, for the dexterous perfection of their form. 
 The balance of the rhythmic clauses never obscures or overloads the 
 sense. Gracchus could tell a tale, like that of the cruel wrongs 
 inflicted on the allies, which could arouse a thrill of horror without 
 also awakening the reflection that the speaker was a man of great 
 sensibility and had a wonderful command of commiserative ter- 
 minology. He could ask the crowd where he should fly, whether 
 to the Capitol dripping with a brother's blood, or to the home where 
 the widowed mother sat in misery and tears ; ^ and no one thought 
 that this was a mere figure of speech. It all seemed real, because 
 Gracchus was a true artist as well as a true man, and knew by an 
 unerring instinct when to pause. This type of objective oratory, 
 with its simple and vivid pictures, its brilliant but never laboured 
 wit, its capacity for producing the illusion that the man is revealed 
 in the utterance, its suggestion of something deeper than that 
 which the mere words convey — a suggestion which all feel but only 
 the learned understand — is equally pleasing to the trained and the 
 unlettered mind. The polished weapon, which dazzled the eyes 
 of the crowd, was viewed with respect even by the cultured nobles 
 against whom it was directed. 
 
 Caius's qualities had been tested for some years before he attained 
 the tribunate, and the promise given by his name, his attitude and 
 bis eloquence was strengthened by the fact that he had no rival in 
 bhe popular favour. Carbo was probably on his way to the Op- 
 timates, and Flaccus's failure was too recent to make him valuable 
 in any other quality than that of an assistant. But Caius had 
 :isen through the opportunities given by the agitation which these 
 men had sustained, although his advance to the foremost place 
 seemed more like the work of destiny than of design. When a 
 (routh of ti^enty-one, he had found himself elevated to the rank 
 jf a land commissioner ; ^ but this accidental identification with 
 riberius's policy was not immediately followed by any action 
 srhich betrayed a craving for an active political career. He is said 
 ;o have shunned the Forum, that training school and advertising 
 irena where the aspiring youth of Rome practised their litigious 
 Joquence, and to have lived a life of calm retirement which some 
 
 1 Cic. de Or. iii. 56. 214. ^ P. 127. 
 
 13 
 
194 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 126 
 
 attributed to fear and others to resentment. It was even believed 
 by a few that he doubted the wisdom of his brother's career.^ But 
 it was soon found that the leisure which he cultivated was not that 
 of easy enjoyment and did not promise prolonged repose. He was 
 grappling with the mysteries of language, and learning by patient 
 study the art of finding the words that would give to thought both 
 form and wings. The thought, too, must have been taking a 
 clearer shape ; for Tiberius had left a heritage of crude ideas, and 
 men were trying to introduce some of these into the region of 
 practical politics. The first call to arms was Carbo's proposal for 
 legalising re-election to the tribunate. It drew from Gracchus a 
 speech in its support, which contained a bitter indictment of those 
 who had been the cause of the " human sacrifice " fulfilled in his 
 brother's murder.^ Five years later he was amongst the foremost 
 of the opponents of the alien-act of Pennus, and exposed the dan- 
 gerous folly involved in a jealous policy of exclusion.^ But the 
 courts of law are said to have given him the first great opportunity 
 of revealing his extraordinary powers to the world. As an advocate 
 for a friend called Vettius, he delivered a speech which seemed to 
 lift him to a plane unapproachable by the other orators of the day. 
 The spectacle of the crowd almost raving with joy and frantically 
 applauding the new-found hero, showed that a man had appeared 
 who could really touch the hearts of the people, and is said to have 
 suggested to men of affairs that every means must be used to hinder 
 Gracchus's accession to the tribunate.* The chance of the lot 
 sent him as quaestor with the consul Orestes to Sardinia. It was 
 with joyful hearts that his enemies saw him depart to that unhealthy 
 clime,* and to Caius himself the change to the active life of the 
 camp was not unpleasing. He is said still to have dreaded the 
 plunge into the stormy sea of politics, and in Sardinia he was safe 
 from the appeals of the people and the entreaties of his friends." 
 Yet already he had received a warning that there was no escape. 
 While wrestling with himself as to whether he should seek the 
 quaestorship, his fevered mind had conjured up a vision. The 
 phantom of his brother had appeared and addressed him in these 
 
 ^Plut. C. Gracch. i. 
 
 'C. Qracchus ap. Chads, ii. p. 177 Qui sapientem eum faciei? Qui et vobis et 
 rei publicae et sibi communiter prospiciat, non qui pro suilla humanam trucidet. 
 'P. 167. <Plut. /.c. 
 
 ' Ibid. Cf. [Victor] de Vir. III. 65 Pestilentem Sardinian! quaestor sortitus. 
 » Plut. I.e. 
 
26-125 B.C.] GRACCHUS IN SARDINIA 195 
 
 ■ords " Why dost thou Hnger, Caius ? It is not given thee to 
 raw back. One Hfe, one death is fated for us both, as defenders 
 f the people's rights." His behef in the reality of this warning is 
 mply attested ; ^ but the sense that he was predestined and fore- 
 oomed, though it may have given an added seriousness to his life, 
 ;ft him as calm and vigorous as before. Like Tiberius he was 
 fithin a sphere of his father's influence, and this memory must have 
 timulated his devotion to his military and provincial duties. He 
 ^on distinction in the field and a repute for justice in his dealings 
 dth the subject tribes, while his simplicity of life and capacity for 
 oil suggested the veteran campaigner, not the tyro from the most 
 iixurious of cities.^ The extent of the services in Sardinia and 
 leighbouring lands which his name and character enabled him to 
 ender to the State, has been perhaps exaggerated, or at least faultily 
 tated, by our authority ; but, in view of the unquestioned confidence 
 hown by the Numantines in his brother when as young a man, 
 here is no reason to doubt their reality. It is said that, when 
 he treacherous winter of Sardinia had shaken the troops with 
 ihills, the commander sent to the cities asking for a supply of 
 lothing. These towns, which were probably federate communities 
 md exempt by treaty from the requisitions of Rome, appealed to 
 ;he senate. They feared no doubt the easy lapse of an act of 
 dndness into a bmden fixed by precedent. The senate, as in duty 
 jound, upheld their contention; and suffering and disease would 
 lave reigned in the Roman camp, had not Gracchus visited the 
 iities in person and prevailed on them to send the necessary help.' 
 3n another occasion envoys from Micipsa of Numidia are said to 
 lave appeared at Rome and offered a supply of com for the 
 Sardinian army. The request had perhaps been made by Gracchus. 
 Co the Numidian king he was simply the grandson of the elder 
 \fricanus : and the envoys in their simplicity mentioned his name 
 IS the intermediary of the royal bounty. The senate, we are told, 
 ■ejected the proffered help.^ The curious parallelism between the 
 jresent career of Caius and the early activities of his brother must 
 lave struck many ; to the senate these proofs of energy and devo- 
 
 ^ Cic. de Div. i. 26. 56 C. vero Gracchus multis dixit, ut scriptum apud eundem 
 !!oeliuni est, sibi in somniis quaestuiam petere dubitaiiti Ti. fratrem visum esse 
 licere, quam vellet cunctaretur, tamen eodem sibi leto quo ipse interisset esse pere- 
 indum. Hoc, ante quam tribunus plebi C. Gracchus factus esset, et se audisse 
 icribit Coelius et dixisse eum multis. Cf. Plut. I.e. 
 
 2 Plut. C. Gracch. z. « Plut. I.e. 
 
196 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 124 
 
 tion seemed but the prelude to similar ingenious attempts to capture 
 public favour at home : and their fears are said to have helped 
 them to the decision to keep Orestes for a further year as pro- 
 consul in Sardinia.! It is possible that the resolution was partly 
 due to military exigencies ; the fact that the troops were relieved 
 was natural in consideration of the sufferings which they had 
 undergone, but the retention of the general to complete a desultory 
 campaign which chiefly demanded knowledge of the country, was a 
 wise and not unusual proceeding. It was, however, an advantage 
 that, as custom dictated, the quaestor must remain in the company 
 of his commander. Gracchus's reappearance in Rome was post- 
 poned for a year. It was a slight grace, but much might happen 
 in the time. 
 
 It was in this latter sense that the move was interpreted by the 
 quaestor. A trivial wrong inflamed the impetuous and resentful 
 nature which expectation and entreaty had failed to move. Stung 
 by the belief that he was the victim of a disgraceful subterfuge, 
 Gracchus immediately took ship to Rome. His appearance in the 
 capital was something of a shock even to his friends.^ Public 
 sentiment regarded a quaestor as holding an almost filial,relation to 
 his superior ; the ties produced by their joint activity were held to 
 be indissoluble,^ and the voluntary departure of the subordinate was 
 deemed a breach of official duty. Lapses in conduct on the part of 
 citizens engaged in the public service, which fell short of being 
 criminal, might be visited with varying degrees of ignominy by the 
 censorship : and it happened that this court of morals was now in 
 existence in the persons of the censors Cn. Servilius Caepio and L. 
 Cassius Longinus, who had entered office in the previous year. The 
 censorian judgments, although arbitrary and as a rule spontaneous, 
 were sometimes elicited by prosecution : and an accuser was found 
 to bring the conduct of Gracchus formally before the notice of the 
 magistrates. Had the review of the knights been in progress after 
 his arrival, his case would have been heard during the performance 
 of this ceremony ; for he was as yet but a member of the equestrian 
 
 1 Plut. l.c. 
 
 ^ Ibid. dWa /coi Tots iroXXo*s &W6KQrov iBixei rh rafilav 6vTa trpoairQaTTivai rot 
 
 ipj(pvTOS' 
 
 ^ Cic. Div. in Caec. ig. 6i Sic enim a majoribus nostiis accepimus praetorem 
 quaestori suo parentis loco esse oportere : nuUam neque justiorem neque graviorem 
 causam necessitudinis posse reperiri quam conjunctionem sortis, quam provinciae, 
 quam officii, quam publici muneris societatem. 
 
124 B.C.] RETURN OF GRACCHUS 197 
 
 n'der, and the slightest disability pronounced against him, had he 
 Deen found guilty, would have assumed the form of the deprivation 
 Df his public horse and his exclusion from the eighteen centuries. 
 But it is possible that, at this stage of the history of the censorship, 
 penalties could be inflicted upon the members of all classes at any 
 iate preceding the lustral sacrifice, that the usual examination of the 
 citizen body had been completed, and that Gracchus appeared alone 
 before the tribunal of the censors. His defence became famous ; ^ its 
 result is unknown. The trial probably ended in his acquittal,^ 
 ilthough condemnation would have exercised little influence on his 
 subsequent career, for the ignominy pronounced by the censors en- 
 bailed no disability for holding a magistracy. But, whatever may 
 have been the issue, Gracchus improved the occasion by an harangue 
 to the people,^ in which he defended his conduct as one of their 
 representatives in Sardinia. The speech was important for its 
 caustic descriptions of the habits of the nobility when freed from the 
 moral atmosphere of Rome. With extreme ingenuity he worked 
 into the description of the habits of his own oflScial life a scathing 
 indictment, expressed in the frankest terms, of the self-seeking, the 
 luxury, the unnatural vices, the rampant robbery of the average 
 provincial despot. His auditors learnt the details of a commander's 
 environment — the elaborate cooking apparatus, the throng of hand- 
 some favourites, the jars of wine which, when emptied, returned to 
 Rome as receptacles of gold and silver mysteriously acquired. 
 Gracchus must have delighted his audience with a subject on which 
 the masses love to dwell, the vices of their superiors. The luridness 
 of the picture must have given it a false appearance" of universal 
 truth. It seemed to be the indictment of a class, and suggested 
 that the speaker stood aloof from his own order and looked only to 
 the pure judgment of the people. His enemies tried a new device. 
 They knew that one flaw in his armour was his sympathy with the 
 claims of the allies. Could he be compromised as an agent in that 
 dark conspiracy which had prompted the impudent Italian claims and 
 ended in open rebellion, his credit would be gone, even if his career 
 
 ' A passage from Caius's speech " apud censores " is quoted by Cicero Orat. 70. 233. 
 
 ^ Plutarch says (C. Gracch. 2) that Caius airri<rdnevos \6yov olSra linearyiiTi tus 
 yydiias twv aKovaivTinv, i>s imeKBeiv riSiKrj(r6ai Tct fieyiffra S6^as. The passage seems 
 to imply acquittal by the censors, although tuv aKovaavrav suggests the larger 
 audience. The arguments cited by Plutarch as developed by Caius appeared, or 
 were repeated, in the speech that he subsequently made before the people. 
 
 'Gell. XV. 12. 
 
198 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 12 
 
 were not closed by exile. He was accordingly threatened with ai 
 impeachment for complicity in the movement which had issued ii 
 the outbreak at Fregellae. It is uncertain whether he was forced t 
 submit to the judgment of a court ; but we are told that he dissi 
 pated every suspicion, and surmounted the last and most dangerou 
 of the obstacles with which his path was blocked.^ Straightway hi 
 offered himself for the tribunate, and, as the day of the election ap 
 proached, every effort was made by the nobility to secure his defeat 
 Old differences were forgotten ; a common panic produced harmom 
 amongst the cliques ; it even seems as if his opponents agreed tha 
 no man of extreme views should be advanced against him, for Grac 
 chus in his tribunate had to contend with no such hostile colleagut 
 as Octavius. The candidature of an extremist might mean vote 
 for Gracchus: and it was preferable to concentrate support oi 
 neutral men, or even on men of liberal views who were known to bi 
 in favour with the crowd. The great clientele of the country dis 
 tricts was doubtless beaten up ; and we know that, on the other side 
 the hopes of the needy agriculturist, and the gratitude of the newb 
 established peasant farmer, brought many a supporter to Gracchu 
 from distant Italian homesteads. The city was so flooded by th( 
 inrush of the country folk that many an elector found himself with 
 out a roof to shelter him, and the place of voting could accommodat( 
 only a portion of the crowd. The rest climbed on roofs and tiles 
 and filled the air with discordant party cries until space was givei 
 for a descent to the voting enclosures. When the poll was declared 
 it was found that the electoral manoeuvres of the nobility had beei 
 so far successful that Gracchus occupied but the fourth place oi 
 the list.^ But, from the moment of his entrance on office, his pre 
 dominance was assured. We hear nothing of the colleagues whon 
 he overshadowed. Some may have been caught in the stream o 
 Gracchus's eloquence ; others have found it useless or dangerous ti 
 oppose the enthusiasm which his proposals aroused, and the for 
 midable combination which he created by the alluring prospect 
 that he held out to the members of the equestrian order. Th 
 collegiate character of the magistracy practically sank into abey 
 ance, and his rule was that of a single man. First he gave vent t 
 the passions of the mob by dwelling, as no one had yet dared to dc 
 on the gloomy tragedy of his brother's fall and the cruel persecutioi 
 
 1 Plut. C. Gracch. 3 ; [Victor] de Vir. III. 65. » Plut. I.e. 
 
123 B.C.] TRIBUNATE OF GRACCHUS 199 
 
 which had followed the catastrophe. The blood of a murdered 
 tribune was wholly unavenged in a state which had once waged 
 war with Falerii to punish a mere insult to the holy office, and had 
 condemned a citizen to death because he had not risen from his 
 place while a tribune walked through the Forum. " Before your 
 very eyes," he said, " they beat Tiberius to death with cudgels ; 
 they dragged his dead body from the Capitol through the midst 
 of the city to cast it into the river ; those of his friends whom they 
 seized, they put to death untried. And yet think how your consti- 
 tution guards the citizen's life ! If a man is accused on a capital 
 charge and does not immediately obey the summons, it is ordained 
 that a trumpeter come at dawn before his doot and summon him 
 by sound of trumpet ; until this is done, no vote may be pronounced 
 against him. So carefully and watchfully did our ancestors regu- 
 late the course of justice."^ A cry for vengeance is here merged 
 in a great constitutional principle ; and these utterances paved the 
 way for the measure immediately formulated that no court should 
 be established to try a citizen on a capital charge, unless such a 
 court had received the sanction of the people.^ The power of the 
 Comitia to delegate its jurisdiction without appeal is here affirmed ; 
 the right of the senate to institute an inquisition without appeal 
 is here denied. The measure was a development of a suggestion 
 which had been made by Tiberius Gracchus, who had himself prob- 
 ably called attention to the fact that the establishment of capital 
 commissions by the senate was a violation of the principle of the 
 provocation Caius Gracchus, however, did not attempt to ordain 
 that an appeal should be possible from the judgment of the standing 
 commissions (quaestiones perpetuae); for, though the initiative 
 in the creation of these courts had been taken by the senate, they 
 had long received the sanction of law, and their self-sufficiency was 
 perhaps covered by the principle that the people, in creating a 
 commission, waived its own powers of final jurisdiction. But there 
 were other technical as well as practical disadvantages in instituting 
 an appeal from these commissions. The provocatio had always 
 
 > Plut. I.e. 
 
 ^Cic. pro Rab. 4. 12 C. Gracchus legem tulit ne de capita civium Romanorum 
 injussu vestro (sc. populi) judicaretur. Plut. C. Gracch. 4 (y6i>.ov eiaiipepev) elf t« 
 ApXav &KpiTov ixKiKiipixoi- iroXlrnv, Kar avTOV SiS6vTa Kpicriv t$ S^fi(f. Schol. 
 Ambros. p. 370 Quia sententiam tulerat Gracchus, ut ne quis in civem Romanum 
 capitalem sententiam diceret. Cic. in Cat. iv. 5. 10 ; in Verr. v. 63. 163. Cf. Cic. 
 fro Sest. 28. 61 ; Dio Cass, xxxviii. 14. 
 
 3?. 135. 
 
200 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 12 
 
 been the challenge to the decision of a magistrate ; but in thes 
 standing courts the actions of the president and of the judices wh 
 sat with him were practically indistinguishable, and the sentenc 
 pronounced was in no sense a magisterial decision. The courts hai 
 also been instituted to avoid the clumsiness of popular jurisdiction 
 but this clumsiness would be restored, if their decision was to b 
 shaken by a further appeal to the Comitia. Gracchus, in fact, whei 
 he proposed this law, was not thinking of the ordinary course o 
 jurisdiction at all. He had before his mind the summary measure 
 by which the senate took on itself to visit such epidemics of crim( 
 as were held to be beyond the strength of the regular courts, anc 
 more especially the manner in which this body had lately deal 
 with alleged cases of sedition or treason. The investigation di 
 rected against the supporters of his brother was the crucial instance 
 which he brought before the people, and it is possible that, at t 
 still later date, the inquiry which followed the fall of Pregellae hac 
 been instituted on the sole authority of the senate and had founc 
 a certain number of victims in the citizen body. Practically, there 
 fore, Gracchus in this law wholly denied, either as the result o: 
 experience or by anticipation, the legality of the summary jurisdic 
 tion which followed a declaration of martial law. 
 
 In the creation of these extraordinary commissions the senat( 
 never took upon itself the office of judge, nor was the commissioi 
 itself composed of senators appointed by the house. The j urisdic- 
 tion was exercised by a j magistrate at the bidding of the senate 
 and the court thus constituted selected its assessors, who formed t 
 mere council for advice, at its own discretion. It was plain that, i: 
 the law was to be effective, its chief sanction must be directed, nol 
 against the corporation which appointed, but against the judge 
 The responsibility of the individual is the easiest to secure, anc 
 no precautions against martial law can be effective if a divisior 
 of authority, or even obedience to authority, is once admitted 
 Gracchus, therefore, pronounced that criminal proceedings shoulc 
 be possible against the magistrate who had exercised the jurisdic^ 
 tion now pronounced illegal.^ The common law of Rome weni 
 even further, and pronounced every individual responsible for illega 
 acts done at the bidding of a magistrate. The crime which th( 
 magistrate had committed by the exercise of this forbidden juris 
 
 ' Plut. C. Gracch. 4, quoted p. igg, note 2. 
 
123B.C.] LAW AGAINST SENATORIAL COMMISSIONS 201 
 
 diction was probably declai-ed to be treason : and, as there was 
 no standing court at Rome which took cognisance of this offence, 
 the jurisdiction of the Comitia was ordained. The penalty for the 
 crime was doubtless a capital one, and by ancient prescription such 
 a punishment necessitated a trial before the Assembly of the Cen- 
 turies. It is, however, possible that Gracchus rendered the plebeian 
 assembly of the Tribes competent to pronounce the capital sentence 
 against the magistrate who had violated the prescriptions of his 
 law. But, although the magistrate was the chief, he appears not to 
 have been the sole offender under the provisions of this bill. 
 In spite of the fact that the senate as a whole was incapable of 
 being punished for the advice which had prompted the magistrate 
 to an illegal course of action, it seems that the individual senator 
 who moved, or perhaps supported, the decree which led to the 
 forbidden jurisdiction, was made liable to the penalties of the law.' 
 The operation of the enactment was made retrospective, or was 
 perhaps conceived by its very nature to cover the past abuses which 
 had called it into being ; for in a sense it created no new crime, but 
 simply restated the principle of the appeal in a form suited to the 
 proceedings against which it wished to guard. It might have been 
 argued that customary law protected the consul who directed the 
 proceedings of the court which doomed the supporters of Tiberius 
 Gracchus ; but the argument, if used, was of no avail. Popillius 
 was to be the witness to all men of the reality of this reassertion of 
 the palladium of Roman liberty. An impeachment was framed 
 against him, and either before or after his withdrawal from Rome, 
 Caius Gracchus himself formulated and carried through the Plebs 
 the bill of interdiction which doomed him to exile.^ It was in vain 
 that Popillius's young sons and numerous relatives besought the 
 people for mercy .^ The memory of the outrage was too recent, the 
 joyful sense of the power of retaliation too novel and too strong. 
 
 ^Schol. Ambros. p. 370 (quoted p. 199, note 2). Cf. Cic. pro Best. 28. 61 
 Consule me, cum esset designatus (Cato) tribunus plebis (63 B.C.), obtulit in dis- 
 crimen vitam suam ; dixit eam sententiam cujus invidiam capitis periculo sibi prae- 
 standam videbat. Dio Cass, xxxviii. 14. 
 
 ^ Cic. pro Domo 31. 82 Ubi enim tuleras ut mihi aqua et igni interdiceretur ? 
 quod C. Gracchus de P. Popilio . . . tulit. de Leg. iii. 11. 26 Si nos multitudinis 
 furentis inflammata invidia pepulisset tribuniciaque vis in me populum, sicut 
 Gracchus in Laenatem . . . incitasset, ferremus. Cf. pro Cluent. 35. 95 ; de Rep. i. 
 3. 6. For the speeches of Caius Gracchus on PopilUus see Gell. i. 7. 7 ; xi. 13. i. 5. 
 
 ^Cic. post Red. in Sen. 15. 37 Pro me non ut pro P. Popilio, nobilissimo 
 homine, adulescentes iilii, non propinquorum multitudo populum Romanum est 
 deprecata. 
 
202 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 123 
 
 All that was possible was a counter demonstration which should 
 emphasise the sympathy of loyalists with the illustrious victim, 
 and Popillius was escorted to the gates by a weeping crowd.^ We 
 know that condemnation also overtook his colleague Rupilius,^ and 
 it is probable that he too fell a victim to the sense of vengeance or 
 of justice aroused by the Gracchan law. 
 
 A less justifiable spirit of retaliation is exhibited by another 
 enactment with which Gracchus inaugurated his tribunate, although 
 in this, as in all his other acts, the blow levelled at his enemies was 
 not devoid of a deep political significance. He introduced a pro- 
 posal that a magistrate who had been deposed by the people should 
 not be allowed to hold any further office.^ Octavius was the obvious 
 victim, and the mere personal significance of the measure does not 
 necessarily imply that Gracchus was bui-ning with resenthient against 
 a man, whose opposition to his brother had rapidly been forgotten in 
 the degradation which he had experienced at that brother's hands. 
 Hatred to the injured may be a sentiment natural to the wrong- 
 doer, but is not likely to be imparted even to the most ardent 
 supporter of the author of the mischief. It were better to forget 
 Octavius, if Octavius would allow himself to be forgotten ; but the 
 sturdy champion of the senate, still in the middle of his career, 
 may have been a future danger and a present eyesore to the 
 people : Gracchus's invectives probably carried him and his auditors 
 further than he intended, and the rehabilitation of his brother's 
 tribunate in its integrity may have seemed to demand this strong 
 assertion of the justice of his act. But the legality of deposition 
 by the people was a still more important point. Merely to assert 
 it would be to imply that Tiberius had been wrong. How could it 
 be more emphatically proclaimed than by making its consequences 
 perpetual and giving it a kind of penal character ? But the per- 
 sonal aspect of the measure proved too invidious even for its pro- 
 
 ' Diod. XXXV. 26 i JloiriWios fierii Stucpiuv irh tS>v Sx^""' irpofTriiupBrt 4K$a\\6ii(Vos 
 fK Trjs ■7r6\€as. Cf. Plut. C. Gracch. 4. 
 
 ^Vellei. ii. 7 Rupilium Popiliumque, qui consules asperrime in Tiberii Gracchi 
 amicos saevierant, postea judiciorum publicorum merito oppressit invidia. It is a 
 little difficult to harmonise Fannius's account of Rupilius's death [ap. Cic. Tusc. iv. 
 17. 40) with this condemnation. Here Rupilius is said to have died of grief at his 
 brother's failure to obtain the consulship, and this failure happened before Scipio's 
 death (Cic. de Am. 20. 73). But his brother may have continued his unsuccessful 
 efforts up to the time of Rupilius's condemnation. 
 
 ' Plut. C. Gracch. 4 (v6ii.ov) ii<ri(f>epe . . . tX Tivas Spxoi/Tos a(j>jlpriTo riiy Ifxh* * 
 8^juof, ovK 4uvra roiyrtf Seurepas apx')^ fi€Tov(rlav eJvat. Cf. Diod. xxxv. 25. Magis- 
 trates who had been deposed, or compelled to abdicate, were known as abacti (Festus 
 p. 23 Abacti magistratus dicebantur, qui coacti deposuerant imperium). 
 
123 B.C.] SOCIAL LEGISLATION 208 
 
 poser. A voice that commanded his respect was raised against it : 
 and Gracchus in withdrawing the bill confessed that Octavius was 
 spared through the intercession of Cornelia.^ 
 
 So far his legislation had but given an outlet to the justifiable 
 resentment of the people, and a guarantee for the security of their 
 most primitive rights. This was to be followed by an appeal to 
 their interests and a measure for securing their permanent comfort. 
 The wonderful solidarity of Gracchus and his supporters, the crown- 
 ing triumph of the demagogue which is to make each man feel that 
 he is an agent in his own salvation, have been traced to this con- 
 structive legislation for the benefit of classes, which ancient authors, 
 writing under aristocratic prepossessions, have described by the ugly 
 name of bribery.^ The poor of Rome, if we include in this designa- 
 tion those who lived on the margin as well as those who were sunk 
 in the depths of destitution, probably included the majority of the 
 inhabitants of the town. The city had practically no organised 
 industries. The retail trader and the purveyor of luxuries doubtless 
 flourished ; but, in the scanty manufactures which the capital still 
 provided, the army of free labour must have been always worsted by 
 the cruel competition of the cheaper and more skilful slave or freed- 
 man. But the poor of Rome did not form the cowed and shivering 
 class that are seen on the streets of a northern capital. They were 
 the merry and vivacious lazzaroni of the pavement and the portico, 
 composite products of many climes, with all the lively endurance of 
 the southerner and intellects sharpened by the ingenious devices 
 requisite for procuring the minimum sustenance of life. Could they 
 secure this by the desultory labour which alone was provided by 
 the economic conditions of Rome, their lot was far from unhappy. 
 As in most ancient civilisations, the poor were better provided with 
 the amenities than with the bare necessities of existence. Although 
 the vast provision for the pleasures of the people, by which the 
 Caesars maintained their popularity, w£is yet lacking, and even the 
 erection of a permanent theatre was frowned on by the senate,' yet 
 
 1 Plut. I.e. 
 
 ^ Diod. XXXV. 25 d Vp^Kxos Sitifnjyop^a'as irepl tov KaraKvcrat apiffroKpaTiav, STifioKpariav 
 S€ (rvtrriiffai, koI e<piK6ixevos ttis hviivTotv evxp^ffTias rajy fiepav, ovKeri <TvvaywvL(Tras 
 aXKa Kadiiirep avBevras elx^ tovtovs virep ttjs iSias r6Kfj.Tjs. SsdeKafffiej/os ykp cKatrros 
 TOiS iiiats i\7riinv us inrep iBiav ayaBav rav ei<r(l>epofi€vcov v6fiQiv erotfios ^v iriivra Kivhvvov 
 vKO/jt-fyeiv. 
 
 ' Liv. Ep. xlviii (155 B.C.) Cum locatum a censoribus theatrum exstrueretur ; P. 
 Cornelio Nasica auctore, tanquam inutile et nociturum publicis moribus, ex senatus 
 consulto destructum est, populusque aliquamdiu stans ludos spectavit. 
 
204 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 123 
 
 the capital provided endless excitement for the leisured mind and 
 the observant eye. It was for their benefit that the gladiatorial 
 show was provided by the rich, and the gorgeous triumph by the 
 State ; but it was the antics of the nobility in the law courts 
 and at the hustings that afforded the more constant and pleasing 
 spectacle. Attendance at the Contiones and the Comitia not only 
 delighted the eye and ear, but filled the heart with pride, and 
 sometimes the purse with money. For here the units, inconsider- 
 able in themselves, had become a collective power ; they could shout 
 down the most dignified of the senators, exalt the favourite of the 
 moment, reward a service or revenge a slight in the perfect security 
 given by the secrecy of the ballot. Large numbers of the poorer 
 class were attached to the great houses by ancestral ties ; for the 
 descendants of freedmen, although they could make no legal claim 
 on the house which represented the patron of their ancestors, were 
 too valuable as voting units to be neglected by its representatives, 
 even when the sense of the obligations of wealth, which was one of 
 the best features of Roman civilisation, failed to provide an occasional 
 alleviation for the misery of dependants. From a political point 
 of view, this dependence was utterly demoralising ; for it made the 
 recipients of benefits either blind supporters of, or traitors to, the 
 personal cause which they professed. It was on the whole prefer- 
 able that, if patronage was essential, the State should take over this 
 duty ; the large body of the unattached proletariate would be 
 placed on a level with their more fortunate brethren, and the latter 
 would be freed from a dependence which merely served private and 
 selfish interests. A semi-destitute proletariate can only be dealt 
 : with in three ways. They may be forced to work, encouraged to 
 L emigrate, or partially supported by the State. The first device 
 was impossible, for it was not a submerged fraction with which 
 Rome had to deal, but the better part of the resident sovereign 
 body ; the second, although discredited by the senate, had been 
 tried in one form by Tiberius Gracchus and was to be attempted in 
 another shape by Caius ; but it is a remedy that can never be per- 
 fect, for it does not touch the class, more highly strung, more intelli- 
 gent, and at the same time more capable of degradation, which the 
 luxury of the capital enthrals. The last device had not yet been 
 attempted. It remained for Gracchus to try it. We have no 
 analysis of his motives ; but many provocatives to his modest 
 attempt at state socialism may be suggested. There was first the 
 
123 B.C.] THE CORN LAW 205 
 
 Hellenic ideal of the leisured and independent citizen, as exempli- 
 fied by the state payments and the " distributions " which the great 
 leaders of the old world had thought necessary for the fulfilment 
 of democracy. There was secondly the very obvious fact that the 
 government was reaping a golden harvest from the provinces and 
 merely scattering a few stray grains amongst its subjects. There 
 was thirdly the consideration that much had been done for the 
 landed class and nothing for the city proletariate. Other con- 
 siderations of a more immediate and economic character were 
 doubtless present. The area of corn production was now small. 
 Sicily was still perhaps beggared by its servile war, and the granary 
 of Rome was practically to be found in Africa. The import of 
 com from this quarter, dependent as it was on the weather and 
 controlled purely by considerations of the money-market, was pro- 
 bably fitful, and the price must have been subject to great varia- 
 tions. But, at this particular time, the supply must have been 
 diminished to an alarming extent, and the price proportionately 
 raised, by the swarm of locusts which had lately made havoc of the 
 crops of Africa.^ Lastly, the purely personal advantage of secur- 
 ing a subsidised class for the political support of the demagogue 
 of the moment — a consideration which is but a baser interpretation 
 of the Hellenic ideal — must have appealed to the practical poli- 
 tician in Gracchus as the more impersonal view appealed to the- 
 statesman. He would secure a permanent and stable constituency, 
 and guard against the danger, which had proved fatal to his 
 brother, of the absence from Rome of the majority of his supporters 
 at some critical moment. 
 
 From the imperfect records of Gracchus's proposal we gather 
 that a certain amount of com was to be sold monthly at a reduced 
 price to any citizen who offered himself as a purchaser.^ The rate 
 was fixed at 6^ asses the modius, which is calculated to have been 
 about half the market-price.^ The monthly distribution would 
 
 ' Liv. Ep. Ix. ; Oros. v. ii ; Nitzsch Die Gracchen p. 393. 
 
 ^Plut. C Gracch. 5 d 5e iriTiKbs {y6fios) i-jrevuviCotv toTs trevfta't t^v ayopay. 
 App. Bell. Civ. i. 21 triTTjp^fftov efififit/ov Spitras eKdffTtft ruy ^yjfjiOTUv airh tS>v koivSiv 
 Xp^liiToiv, ov TtpSrepov iiaSbs Si.aSlSotr0ai. Vellei. ii. 6 Frumentum plebi dari insti- 
 tuerat. Liv. EJ>. Ix Leges tulit, inter quas frumentariam, ut senis et triente frumen- 
 tum plebi daretur. Schol. Bob. p. 303 Ut senis aeris et trientibus modios singulos 
 populus acciperet. Cf. Mommsen Die romischen Tribus pp. 179 and 182. 
 
 ' Mommsen (Hist, of Rome bk. iv. c. 3) considers it rather less than half. 
 The average market-price of the modius is difficult to fix. A low price seems to 
 have been about 12 asses the modius. See Smith and Wilkins in Smith Diet, of 
 
206 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 123 
 
 practically have excluded all but the urban proletariate, and would 
 thus have both limited the operation of the relief to the poor of 
 the city and invited an increase in its numbers. But the details of 
 the measure, which would be decisive as to its economic character, 
 are unknown to us. We are not told what proportion the monthly 
 quantity of grain sold at this cheap rate bore to the total amount 
 required for the support of a family ; whether the relief was granted 
 only to the head of a house or also to his adult sons ; whether any 
 one who claimed the rights of citizenship could appear at the 
 monthly sale, or only those who had registered their names at some 
 given time. The fact of registration, if it existed, might have been 
 regarded as a stigma and might thus have limited the number of 
 recipients. Some of the economic objections to his scheme were 
 not unknown to Gracchus ; indeed they were pressed home vigor- 
 ously by his opponents. It was pointed out that he was enervating 
 the labourer and exhausting the treasury. The validity of the 
 first objection depends to a large extent on the unknown "data" 
 which we have just mentioned. Gracchus may have maintained 
 that a greater standard of comfort would be secured for the same 
 amount of work. The second objection he was so far from admitting 
 that he asserted that his proposal would really lighten the burdens 
 of the Aerarium.i He may have taken the view that a moderate, 
 steady and calculable loss on com purchased in large quantities, 
 and therefore presumably at a reduced price, would be cheaper 
 in the end than the cost entailed by the spasmodic attempts which 
 the State had to make in times of crisis to put grain upon the 
 market ; ^ and there may have been some truth in the idea that, 
 when the State became for the first time a steady purchaser, com- 
 petition between the publicans of Sicily or the proprietors of Africa 
 might greatly reduce the normal market price. He does not seem 
 to have been disturbed by the consideration that the sale of com 
 below the market price at Rome was hardly the best way of helping 
 the Italian farmer. The State would certainly buy in the cheapest 
 market, and this was not to be found in Italy. But it is probable 
 that under no circumstances could Rome have become the usual 
 
 Antiq.i. p. 877. For occasional sales below the market-price at an earlier period 
 see Plm. H. AT. xviii. 3. 17 M. Varro auctor est, cum L. Metellus (cos. 251 B.C.) 
 m trmmpho plunmos duxit elephantos, assibus singulis farris modios fuisse. 
 
 iCic. Tusc.Disp. iii. 20. 48 C. Gracchus, cum largitiones maximas fecisset et 
 ettudisset aeranum, verbis tamen defendebat aerarium, 
 ' P. 72. 
 
123 B.C.] THE CORN LAW 207 
 
 market for the produce of the recently established proprietors, and 
 that, except at times of unusual scarcity in the transmarine pro- 
 vinces, imported com could always have undersold that which was 
 grown in Italy. Under the new system the Italian husbandman 
 would find a purchaser in the State, if Sicily and Africa were 
 visited by some injury to their crops. A vulnerable point in the 
 Gracchan system of sale was exhibited in the fact that no inquiry 
 was instituted as to the means of the applicants. This blemish 
 was vigorously brought home to the legislator when the aged noble, 
 Calpumius Piso surnamed "the Frugal," the author of the first 
 law that gave redress to the provincials, and a vigorous opponent 
 of Gracchus's scheme, gravely advanced on the occasion of the first 
 distribution and demanded his appropriate sharer^ The object 
 lesson would be wasted on those who hold that the honourable 
 acceptance of relief implies the universality of the gift : that the 
 restraining influences, if they exist, should be moral and not the 
 result of inquisition. But neither the possibility nor the necessity 
 of discrimination would probably have been allowed by Gracchus. 
 It would have been resented by the people, and did not appeal to 
 the statesmanship, widely spread in the Greek and not unknown in 
 the Roman world, which regarded it as one of the duties of a State 
 to provide cheap food for its citizens. The lamentations of a later 
 day over a pauperised proletariate and an exhausted treasury^ 
 cannot strictly be laid to the account of the original scheme, except 
 in so far as it served as a precedent ; they were the consequence of 
 the action of later demagogues who, instructed by Gracchus as to 
 the mode in which an easy popularity might be secured, introduced 
 laws which sanctioned an almost gratuitous distribution of grain. 
 The Gracchan law contained a provision for the building of ad- 
 ditional store-houses for the accumulation of the great reserve of 
 com, which was demanded by the new system of regular public 
 sales, and the Sempronian granaries thus created remained as a 
 witness of the originality and completeness of the tribune's work.' 
 
 1 Cic. Tusc. Disp. iii. 20. 48. 
 
 ' Cic. de Off. ii. 21. 72 C. Gracchi frumentaria magna largitio ; exhauriebat 
 igitur aerarium ; pro Sest. 48. 103 Frumentariam legem C. Gracchus ferebat. 
 Jucunda res plebei ; victus enim suppeditabatur large sine labore. C/. Brut. 62. 
 222. Diod. XXXV, 25 rh KOivhv TafiteTov eis aiffxpas Kol aKalpovs dajrdifas Kai ;^apiTOS 
 ava\lffKQ)y els eavrhy vdyras airo^Keireiy iiroiyifff. Cf. Oros. V. 12. 
 
 'Plut. C. Gracch. 6 eypoij/e Se Kol . . . Kara(rKevd(i<r8ai <mo06Kia. Festus p. 
 2go Sempronia horrea qui locus dicitur, in eo fuerunt lege Gracchi, ad custodiam 
 firumenti publici. 
 
208 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. is 
 
 The Roman citizen was still frequently summoned from h 
 work, or roused from his lethargy, by the call of military service 
 and the practice of the conscription fostered a series of grievance 
 one of which had already attracted the attention of Tiberii 
 Gracchus.^ Caius was bound to deal with the question : and th 
 two provisions of his enactment which are known to us, show 
 spirit of moderation which neither justifies the belief that th 
 demagogue was playing to the army, nor accredits the view that hi 
 interference relaxed the bonds of discipline amongst the legions 
 The most scandalous anomaly in the Roman army-system was th 
 miserable pittance earned by the conscript when the legal deduc 
 tions had been made from his nominal rate of pay. His daily wag 
 was but one-third of the denarius, or five and one-third asses a daj 
 as it had remained unaltered from the times of the Second Puni 
 War, in spite of the fact that the conditions of service were noi 
 wholly different and that garrison duty in the provinces for lonj 
 periods of years had replaced the temporary call-to-arms which th 
 average Italian campaign alone demanded ; and from this quot 
 was deducted the cost of the clothing which he wore and, as ther 
 is every reason to believe, of the whole of the rations which he con 
 sumed. We should have expected a radical reformer to have raisec 
 his pay or at least to have given him free food. But Gracchus con 
 tented himself with enacting that the soldier's clothing should b^ 
 given him free of charge by the State.^ Another military abus 
 was due to the difficulty which commanders experienced in findinj 
 efficient recruits. The young and adventurous supplied better am 
 more willing material than those already habituated to the careles 
 life of the streets, or already engaged in some settled occupation 
 and, although it is scarcely credible that boys under the age o 
 eighteen were forced to enlist, they were certainly permitted an( 
 perhaps encouraged to join the ranks. The law of Gracchus for 
 bade the enlistment of a recruit at an age earlier than the completioi 
 of the seventeenth year.* These military measures, slight in them 
 selves, were of importance as marking the beginning of the move 
 
 ip. 135. 
 
 ^ This view is represented in a criticism preserved by Diodorus xxxv. 25 roi 
 (TTparuiTms Sia twv v6fiav Tci rrjs apxalas dyaj-y^s aixTrriph Kara.xapi'rdii.evos &TreWia 
 Kol avapx^av elcr'fjyayei' els r^v voXirelav. 
 
 ^ Plut. C. Gracck. 5 iS Se (rTpnTiaiTMhs {i'6/ws) iffSriTd re KeKeiav Sri/uxrla xopV 
 ye7(rdaL koI /xTfSet/ els tovto ttjs fit(r&0(f>opas v^atpeifrdai t&v trrpaTevofiivtitv, 
 
 ^ Koi vediTepov irav eirraKaiSeKa ixij KaraKeyeaOai ffTparttirTjy (Plut. I.e.), 
 
123 B.C.] THE NEW LAND LAW 209 
 
 ment by which the whole question of army reform, utterly neglected 
 by the government, was taken up and carried out by independent 
 representatives of the people. But a Roman army was to a large 
 extent the creation of the executive power ; and it required a mili- 
 tary commander, not a tribune, to produce the radical alterations 
 which alone could make the mighty instrument, which had won 
 the empire, capable of defending it. 
 
 The last boon of Gracchus to the citizen body as a whole was 
 a new agrarian law.^ The necessity of such a measure was chiefly 
 due to the suspension of the work of the agrarian commission, which 
 had proved an obstacle to the continued execution of his brother's 
 scheme;'' and there is every reason for believing that the new 
 Sempronian law restored their judicial powers to the commissioners. 
 But experience may have shown that the substance of Tiberius's 
 enactment required to be supplemented or modified ; and Caius 
 adopted the procedure usually followed by a Roman legislator when 
 he renewed a measure which had already been in operation. His 
 law was not a brief series of amendments, but a comprehensive 
 statute, so completely covering the ground of the earlier Sempronian 
 law that later legislation cites the law of Caius, and not that of 
 Tiberius Gracchus, as the authority for the regulations which had 
 revolutionised the tenure of the public land.^ The new provisions 
 seem to have dealt with details rather than with principles, and 
 there is no indication that they aimed at the acquisition of territory 
 which had been exempted from the operation of the previous 
 measure, or even touched the hazardous question of the rights of 
 Rome to the land claimed by the Italian allies. We cannot at- 
 tempt to define the extent to which the executive power granted 
 by the new agrarian law was either necessary or effective. Cer- 
 tainly the returns of the census during the next ten years show no 
 increase in the number of registered citizens;* but this circum- 
 stance may be due to the steps which were soon to be taken by the 
 opponents of the Gracchi to nullify the results of their legislation. 
 
 ^ Plut. l.c, ruv Se y6fjLWV . . . 6 /tev ^v K\7jpovxtKhs afxa yefiaif rots irevrjo't rijy 
 Sri/ioiriai'. Liv. Ep, Ix Tulit . . . legem agrariam, quam et frater ejus tulerat. 
 Vellei. ii. 6 (C. Gracchus) dividebat agros, vetabat quemquam civem plus quingentis 
 jugeribus habere, quod aliquando lege Licinia cautum erat. Cf, Cic. de Leg. Agr. 
 i. 7. 21; ii. 5. 10; Oros. v. 12; Florus ii. 3 (iii. 15). 
 
 » P. 158. 
 
 ^Lex Agraria (C. I. L. i. n. 200; Bruns Pontes i. 3. 11) 1. 6. See p. 113, note 2. 
 
 * In 125 B.C. the census had been 394,726 (Liv. Ep. Ix), in 115 it was 394,336 
 (Liv. Ep. Ixiii). See de Boor Fasti Censorii. 
 14 
 
210 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 123 
 
 It is possible, however, that the new com law may have somewhat 
 damped the ardour of the proletariate for a life of agriculture 
 which would have deprived them of its benefits. 
 
 The first tribunate of Caius Gracchus doubtless witnessed the 
 completion of these four acts of legislation, by which the debt to 
 his supporters was lavishly paid and their aid was enlisted for 
 causes which could only indirectly be interpreted as their own. 
 But this year probably witnessed as well the promulgation of 
 the enactments which were to find their fulfilment in a second 
 tribunate. 1 Foremost amongst these was one which dealt with the 
 tenure of the judicial power as exercised, not by the magistrate, but 
 by the panels of jurors who were interpreters both of law and fact 
 on the standing commissions which had recently been created by 
 statute. The interest of the masses in this question was remote. 
 A permanent murder court seems indeed to have had its place 
 amongst the commissions ; but, even though the corruption of its 
 president had on one occasion been clearly proved,^ it is not likely 
 that senatorial judges would have troubled to expose themselves to 
 undue influences when pronouncing on the caput of a citizen of the 
 lower class. The fact that this justice was administered by the 
 nobility may have excited a certain degree of popular interest ; but 
 the question of the transference of the courts from the hands of the 
 senatorial jud-ices would probably never have been heard of, had 
 not the largest item in this judicial competence had a decisively 
 political bearing. The Roman State had been as unsuccessful as 
 others of the ancient world in keeping its j udicial machinery free 
 from the taint of party influences. It had been accounted one of the 
 surest signs of popular sovereignty that the people alone could give 
 judgment on the gravest crimes and pronounce the capital penalty,' 
 and recent political thought had perhaps wholly adapted itself to 
 the Hellenic view that the government of a state must be swayed 
 by the body of men that enforces criminal responsibility in polit- 
 ical matters. This vital power was still retained by the Comitis 
 when criminal justice was concerned with those elemental fact! 
 which are the condition of the existence of a state. The peopl« 
 still took cognisance of treason in all its degrees — a conceptioi 
 which to the Roman mind embraced almost every possible form o: 
 
 ' Herzog Siaatsverf. i. p. 466. 
 
 ^ In 143 B.C. (Cic. de Fin. ii. 16. 54). 
 
 ' Polyb. vi. 14 (quoted p. 105.). 
 
123 B.C.] THE JUDICIARY LAW 211 
 
 official maladministration — and the gloomy record of trials before 
 the Comitia, from this time onward to the close of the Republic, 
 shows that the weapon was exercised as the most forcible imple- 
 ment of political chastisement. But chance had lately presented 
 the opportunity of making the interesting experiment of assimilat- 
 ing criminal jurisdiction in some of its branches to that of the civil 
 courts. The president and jurors of one of the newly established 
 quaestiones formed as isolated a group as the judex of civil j ustice 
 with his assessors, or the greater panels of Centumvirs and Decemvirs. 
 They possessed no authority but that of jurisdiction within their 
 special department ; there seemed no reason why they should be 
 influenced by considerations arising from issues whether legis- 
 lative or administrative. But this appearance of detachment 
 was wholly illusory, and the well-intentioned experiment was as 
 vain as that of Solon, when he carefully separated the administra- 
 tive and j udicial boards in the Athenian commonwealth and com- 
 posed both bodies of practically identical individuals. The new 
 court for the trial of extortion, constituted by the Calpurnian and 
 renewed later by a Junia h law, was controlled by a detachment of 
 the governing body which saw in each impeachment a libel on its own 
 system of administration, and in each condemnation a new prece- 
 dent for hampering the uncontrolled power exercised in the past or 
 coveted for the future by the individual juror. This class jgirit 
 ma y have been more gowerfuL than_J}ribery in jts productiqn_of 
 suspicious acquittals ; and the fact that prosecution was frankly re- 
 cognised as the commonest of party weapons, and that speeches for 
 the prosecution and defence teemed with irrelevant political allu- 
 sions, reduced the question of the guilt of the accused to subordinate 
 proportions in the eyes of all the participants in this judicial war- 
 fare. Charges of corruption were so recklessly hurled at Rome 
 that we can seldom estimate their validity ; but the strong sus- 
 picion of bribery is almost as bad for a government as the proved 
 offence ; and it was certain that senatorial judges did not yield to 
 the evidence which would have supplied conviction to the ordinary 
 man. Some recent acquittals furnished an excellent text to the 
 reformer. L. Aurelius Cotta had emerged successfully from a trial, 
 which had been a mere duel between Scipio Aemilianus for the 
 prosecution and Metellus Macedonicus for the defence. The judges 
 had shown their resentment of Scipio's influence by acquitting 
 Cotta ; and few of the spectators of the struggle seem even to have 
 
212 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 123 
 
 pretended to believe in the innocence of the accused.^ The whole 
 settlement of Asia had been so tainted with the suspicion of 
 pecuniary influences that, when Manius Aquillius successfully ran 
 the gauntlet of the courts,^ it was difficult to believe that the trea- 
 sures of the East had not co-operated towards the result, especially 
 as the senate itself by no n^eans favoured some of the features of 
 Aquillius's organisation of the province. The legates of some of 
 the plundered dependencies were still in 'Rome, bemoaning the 
 verdict and appealing for sympathy with their helpless fellow sub- 
 jects.^ Circumstances favoured the reformer ; it was possible to 
 bring a definite case and to produce actual sufferers before the 
 people ; while the senate, perhaps in consequence of the attitude of 
 some honest dissentients, was unable to make any effectual resis- 
 tance to the scandal and its consequences. 
 
 Had Gracchus thought of restoring this jurisdiction to the 
 Comitia, he would have taken a step which had the theoretical 
 justification that, of all the powers at Rome, the people was the one 
 which had least interest in provincial misgovernment. But it 
 would have been a retrograde movement from the point of view of 
 procedure ; it would not necessarily have abolished senatorial in- 
 fluence, and it would not have attained his object of holding the 
 government permanently in check by the political recognition of a 
 class which rivalled the senate in the definiteness of its organisation 
 and surpassed it in the homogeneity of its interests. The body of 
 capitalists who had assumed the titular designation of knights, had 
 long been chafing at the complete subjection of their commercial 
 interests to the caprice of the provincial governor and the arbitrary 
 dispositions of the home government. Tiberius Gracchus, when he 
 revealed the way to the promised land,* had probably reflected 
 rather than suggested the ambition of the great business men to 
 have a more definite place in the administration assigned them. 
 His appeal had come too late, or seemed too hopeless of success, to 
 win their support for a reformer who had outraged their feelings as 
 capitalists ; but since his death ten years for reflection had elapsed, 
 
 '■ Cic. pro Mur. 28. 58 ; pro Font. 13. 38 ; Brut. 21.81; Div. in Caec. 21. 6g ; Tac. 
 Ann. iii. 66. Valerius Maximus (viii. i. 11) can scarcely be correct in saying that 
 the trial took place apud populum. It seems to have been a trial for extortion, 
 
 'iApp. Bell. Civ. i. 22. Cf. Cic. Div. in Caec. 21. 69 [Ascon.] in loc; App. 
 Mithr. 57. 
 
 ' App. Bell. Civ. i. 22 0% re irpiafiiii 01 kot' avTuv In irap6iiTfs a-hv ^i6vtf touto 
 Trepu6vTis iK€Kp(iy€(ray. 
 
123 B.C.] THE JUDICIARY LAW 218 
 
 and they were years which witnessed a vast extension of their 
 potential activity, and aroused an agonised feeling of helplessness at 
 the subordinate part which they played both to senate and people 
 when the disposal of kingdoms was in question. The suggestions 
 for giving them a share in the control of the provincial world may 
 have been numerous, and their variety is reflected in the different 
 plans which Caius Gracchus himself advanced. The system at 
 which his brother had hinted was that of a joint board composed 
 of the existing senators with the addition of an equal number of 
 equites ; ^ and we have already suggested the possibility that this 
 House of Six Hundred was intended to be the senate of the future, 
 efficient for all purposes and not exclusively devoted to the work of 
 criminal jurisdiction. The same significance may attach to the 
 scheme, which seems to have been propounded by Caius Gracchus 
 during, or perhaps even before, his first tenure of the tribunate, 
 and appears at intervals in proposals made by reformers down to 
 the time of Sulla. Gracchus is said to have suggested the increase of 
 the senate by the addition of three, or, as one authority states, six 
 hundred members of the equestrian order.^ The proposal, if it was 
 one for an enlarged senate, and not for a joint panel of judices, in 
 which a changing body of equites would act as a check on the per- 
 manent senatorial jurors, must soon have been seen to be utterly 
 unsuited to its purpose. It is a scheme characteristic of the aristo- 
 crat who is posing as a friend of the mercantile class and hopes to 
 deceive the vigilance of that keen-sighted fraternity. To give 
 the senate a permanent infusion of new blood would be simply to 
 strengthen its authority, while completely cutting away the links 
 which bound the new membersto theiF^riginaT class! Even the 
 swamping of the existing body by a two-thirds majority of new 
 members would have been transitory in its effects. The new mem- 
 ber of the Curia would soon have shed his old equestrian views and 
 assumed the outlook of his older peers. It might indeed have been 
 possible to devise a system by which the senate would, at the recur- 
 ring intervals of the lustra, have been filled up in equal proportions 
 
 ^ Plut. C Gracch, 5^5^ tiKaffriKhs {v6nos) ^ rh vKelffrov a7re/cot^€ r^y ruv 
 ffvyKXTiTiKuv Swd/ieofs . . , 6 Se rpioKOfflovs ruv hriretav irpoirKare^e^ev avTo7s oZffi 
 TptoKotrlois Kal rcis Kplcreis Koiviis ray e^aKoatav ^iro/ijcre. Cf. Compar. 2. Liv. Ep. Ix 
 Tertiam (legem tulit) qua equestrem ordinem, tunc cum senatu consentientem, 
 corrumperet : " ut sexcenti ex equitibus in curiam sublegerentur : et quia illis tem- 
 poribus trecenti tantum senatores erant, sexcenti equites trecentis senatoribus 
 admiscerentuT " : id est, ut equester ordo bis tantum virium in senatu haberet. 
 
214 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 123 
 
 from ex-magistrates and knights : and in this way a constant 
 supply of middle-class sentiment might have been furnished to the 
 governing body. But even this scheme would have secured to the 
 elected a life-long tenure of power, and this was a fatal obstacle 
 both to the intentions of the reformer and the aspirations of the 
 equestrian order. While the former desired a balance of power, the 
 latter wished that the interests of their class should be enforced by 
 its genuine representatives. Both knew that a participation in the 
 executive power was immaterial, and that all that was needed might 
 be gained by the possession of judicial authority alone. Gracchus's 
 final decision, therefore, was to create a wholly new panel of judices 
 which should be made up exclusively from the members of the 
 titular class of knights.^ 
 
 It was not necessary or desirable that the judiciary law should 
 make any mention of a class, or employ the courtesy title of equites 
 to designate the new judges. The effect might be less invidiously 
 secured by demanding qualifications which were practically identical 
 with the social conditions requisite for the possession of titular 
 knighthood. One of the determining factors was a property quali- 
 fication, and this was possibly placed at the modest total of four 
 hundred thousand sesterces.^ This was the amount of capital which 
 seems at this period to have given its possessor the right of serving 
 on horseback in the army and therefore the claim to the title of 
 eques, but it was a sum that did not convey alarming suggestions 
 of government by millionaires, but rather pointed to the upper 
 
 1 Vellei. ii. 6 C. Gracchus . . . judicia a senatu transferebat ad equites. (C/. 
 ii. 13, 32). Tac. Ann. xii. 60 Cum Semproniis rogationibus equester ordo in 
 possessione judiciorum locaretur. Plin. H. N. xxxiii. 34 Judicum autem ap- 
 pellatione separare eum (equestrem) ordinem primi omnium instituere Gracchi, 
 discordi popularitate in contumeliam senatus. Cf. Diod. xxxv. 25 ; xxxvii. g ; App. 
 Bell. Civ. I. 22. 
 
 ^ The qualifications of the Gracchan jurors were probably identical with those 
 required for jurors under the extant lex Repetundarum (C. I. L. i. n. 198 ; Bruns 
 Pontes i. 3. 10) which is probably the lex Acilia (Cic. in Verr. Act. i. 17. 51; cf. 
 Mommsen in C. I. L. I.e.). The conditions fixed by this law are as follows (11. 12, 
 13) : — Praetor quei inter peregrines jous deicet, is in diebus x proxumeis, quibus 
 h. 1. populus plebesve jouserit, facito utei CDL viros legat, quei in hac civit[ate 
 . . . dum nei quem eorum legat, quei tr. pi., q., iii vir cap., tr. mil. 1. iv primis 
 aliqua earum, iii vijrum a. d. a. siet fueri[tve, queive mercede conductus depug- 
 navit depugnaverit, queive quaestione joudicioque puplico condejmnatus siet quod 
 circa eum in senatum legei non liceat, queive minor anneis xxx majorve annos b 
 gnatus siet, queive in urbem Romam propiusve u[rbem Romam passus M domicilium 
 non habeat, queive ejus magistratus, quei supra scriptus est, pater fi'ater filiusve 
 siet, queive ejus, quei in senatu siet fueritve, pater frater filiusve siet, queive trans 
 mar]e erit. (Cf. 11. 16, 17). Unfortunately the main qualification for the jurors 
 which was stated after the words " in hac civitate," has been lost. 
 
123 B.C.] THE JUDICIARY LAW 215 
 
 middle class as the fittest depositaries of judicial power. Not only 
 were magistrates and ex-magistrates excluded from the Bench, but the 
 disqualification extended to the fathers, brothers and sons of magi- 
 strates and of past or present senators. The ostensible purpose of 
 these provisions was doubtless to ensure that the selected jurors should 
 be bound by no tie of kindred to the individuals who would appear 
 before their judgment seat ; but they must have had the effect of 
 excluding from the new panel many of the true knights belonging 
 to the eighteen centuries ; for this select corps was largely composed 
 of members of the noble families. A similar effect would have been 
 produced by the age qualification. The Gracchan jurors were to 
 be over thirty and under sixty, while a large number of the military 
 equites were under the former limit of age, in consequence of the 
 practice of retiring from the corps after the attainment of the 
 quaestorship or selection into the senate. The aristocratic element 
 in the equestrian order, if this latter expression be used in its widest 
 sense to include both the military and civilian knights, was thus 
 rigorously excluded : and there remained but the men whose busi- 
 ness interests were in no way complicated by respect for senatorial 
 traditions. The official list of the new jurors (album judicum) 
 was probably to be made out annually ; and there is every reason 
 to suppose that there was a considerable change of personnel at 
 each revision, since one of the conditions of membership of the 
 panel — ^residence within a mile of Rome — could hardly have been 
 observed by business men with world-wide interests for any extended 
 period. The conception which still prevailed that judicial service 
 was a burden (munus), would alone have led the revising authority 
 to free past jurors from the service: and the practice must have 
 been welcome to the capitalists themselves, many of whom may 
 well have desired the share of power and perhaps of profit which 
 jurisdiction over their superiors conferred. We are told that 
 the selection of the first panel was entrusted to the legislator 
 himself;^ for the future the Foreign Praetor was to draw up 
 the annual list of four hundred and fifty who were qualified to hear 
 cases of extortion.^ It is not known whether this was the full num- 
 
 ^ Plut. C Gracch. 6 naKeivif robs Kpivovvras e« ruv lir-jrewj/ tBtaKev (<S ^ri^os) «OToAe|ai. 
 
 ^The lex Acilia says "within ten days of its becoming law" (p. 214, note 2). 
 If Plutarch {I.e.) is right about Gracchus selecting the original judices, the pro- 
 vision of this lex shows that it cannot be, as some have thought, the law which first 
 created the Gracchan jurors. It must have been passed subsequently to Gracchus's 
 own lex judiciaria. 
 
216 A HISTORY OF KUMii IJJ«-. i»a 
 
 ber of the new jurors, or whether there were additional members 
 selected by a different authority for the trial of other offences. It 
 is not probable that the judiciary law of Gracchus imposed the 
 new class of judices directly on the civil courts. The judex of 
 private law still retained his character of an arbitrator appointed 
 by the consent of the parties, and it would have been improper to 
 restrict this choice to a class defined by statute. But the practical 
 monopoly of jurisdiction in important cases, which senators seem to 
 have acquired, was henceforth broken through, and the judex in 
 civil suits was sometimes taken from the equestrian order.^ 
 
 The superficial aspect of this great change seemed full of 
 promise for the future. The ample means of the new jurors might 
 be taken as a guarantee of their purity ; their selection from the 
 middle class, as a security of the soundness and disinterestedness 
 of their judgments. Perhaps Gracchus himself was the victim* 
 of this hope, and believed that the scourge of the nobility which he 
 had placed in the hands of the knights, might at least be decorously 
 wielded. The judgment of the after-world varied as to the mode 
 in which they exercised their power. Cicero, in advocating the 
 claims of the order to a renewed tenure of authority, could urge 
 that during their possession of the courts for nearly fifty years, their 
 judgments had never been tainted by the least suspicion of corrup- 
 tion.^ This was a safe assertion if suspicion is only justified by 
 proof; for the Gracchan jurors seem to have been from the first 
 exempted from all prosecution for bribery.^ This legal exemption 
 is all the more remarkable as Gracchus himself was the author of a 
 law which permitted a criminal prosecution for a corrupt judgment.* 
 It is difficult to understand the significance of this enactment, for 
 
 ' In the Ciceronian period we find a knight as a judex in a civil case (Cic. pro 
 Rose. Com.. 14. 42), but it is not probable that senators were ever excluded from the 
 civil bench See Greenidge Legal Procedure of Cicero's Time p. 265. 
 
 ^Cic. in Verr. Act. i. 13. 38. 
 
 'Cic. pro Cluent. 56. 154 Lege . . , quae turn erat Sempronia, nunc est 
 Cornelia (i.e. the law mentioned in note 4) . . . intellegebant . . . ea lege eques- 
 trem ordinem non teneri. Livius Drusus in gi B.C. attempted to fix a retrospective 
 liability on the equestrian jurors (Cic. pro Rab. Post 7. 16). Cf. App. Bell. Civ. i. 
 35. Yet Appian elsewhere (Bell. Civ. i. 22) says that the equites obviated trials for 
 bribery avviaTiiavoi <r<l>t<Tiv avrots Kol $iaiiiifvot. It is possible that prosecutions 
 for corruption before the judicia populi are meant. See Strachan-Davidson in loc. 
 
 *Cic. pro Cluent. 55. 151 Hanc ipsam legem ne quis judicio circumveni- 
 RETUR C. Gracchus tulit ; earn legem pro plebe, non in plebem tulit. Postea L. 
 Sulla . . . cum ejus rei quaestionem hac ipsa lege constitueret, . . . populum 
 Romanum . . . alligare novo quaestionis genere ausus non est. 56. 154 Illi non 
 hoc recusabant, ea ne lege accusarentur . . . quae turn erat Sempronia, nunc est 
 Cornelia . , . intellegebant enim ea lege equestrem ordinem non teneri. 
 
123 B.CJ THJi EQUESTKIAN COURTS 217 
 
 the magistrates, against whom it was directed, were in few cases 
 judges of fact, except in the military domain. It could not have 
 referred to the president of a standing commission who was a mere 
 vehicle for the judgment of the jury; but Gracchus probably con- 
 templated the occasional revival of special commissions sanctioned 
 by the people, and it is possible that even the two praetors who 
 presided over the civil courts may have been subject to the operation 
 of the law, which may not have been directed merely against cor- 
 rupt sentences in criminal matters, as was subsequently the case 
 when the law was renewed by Sulla. It is even possible that the 
 law dates from a period anterior to the creation of the equestrian 
 judices ; but, even on this hypothesis, the exclusion of the latter 
 from its operation was something of an anomaly ; for even the civil 
 judex of Rome, on whose analogy the jurors of the standing com- 
 missions had been created, was in early times criminally, and at a 
 later period at least pecuniarily, liable for an unjust sentence.^ We 
 shall elsewhere have occasion to dwell on the value which the eques- 
 trian order attached to this immunity, and we shall see that its 
 relief at the freedom from vexatious prosecution is of itself no sign 
 of corruption. One of our authorities does indeed emphatically 
 assert the ultimate prevalence of bribery in the equestrian courts : ^ 
 and circumstances may be easily imagined which would have made 
 this resort natural, if not inevitable. A band of capitalists eager to 
 secure a criminal verdict, which had a purely commercial significance, 
 would scarcely be slow to employ commercial methods with their 
 less wealthy representatives on the Bench, and votes might have 
 been purchased by transactions in which cash payments \played no 
 part. But the corruption of individuals was of far less moment than 
 the solidarity of interest and collective cupidity of the mercantile 
 order as a whole. The verdicts of the courts reflected the judgment 
 of the Exchange. It was even possible to create a prosecution ' 
 simply for the purpose of damning a man who, in the exercise of 
 his authority, had betrayed tendencies which were interpreted as 
 hostile to capitalism. 
 
 The future war between the senate and the equites would not 
 have been waged so furiously, had not Gracchus given his favoured 
 class the chance of asserting a positive control, in virtue of an almost 
 official position, over the richest domains of the Roman world. The 
 
 1 Gell. I. XX. 7 ; Justin. Inst. iv. 5. 2. ' App. Bell. Civ. i. 22. 
 
 ' App. l.c. KaTTiyipovs re iixrobs iirl TOis 'iT\ov(Tiois iwiiyopro. 
 
218 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 123 
 
 fatal bequest of Attalus was still the plaything of parties ; but the 
 prize which Tiberius had destined for the people was used by Caius 
 to seal his compact with the knights. The concession, which could 
 not be openly avowed, was accomplished by means so indirect that 
 its meaning must have escaped the majority of the voters who 
 sanctioned it, and its consequences may not have been fully grasped 
 by the legislator himself. The masses who applauded the new law 
 about the province of Asia, may have seen in it but a promise of 
 the increase of their revenues; while the desire of swelling the 
 public finances, which he had so heavily burdened, of putting an 
 end to the anomalous condition of a district which was neither free 
 nor governed, neither protectorate nor province, perhaps even of 
 meeting the wishes of some of the Asiatic provincials, who preferred 
 regular to irregular exactions, may have been combined in the mind 
 of Gracchus with the wish to see the equites confront the senate in 
 yet another sphere. The change which he proposed was one con- 
 cerned with the taxation of the province. It cannot be determined 
 how far he was responsible for the infliction of new burdens on 
 Rome's Asiatic subjects. The increase of the public revenue, of 
 which he boasted in one of his speeches to the people,^ the new 
 harbour dues with which he is credited,^ may point to certain 
 creations of his own ; but the end at which he aimed seems to have 
 been mainly a revival of the system of taxation which had been 
 current in the kingdom of the Attalids, accompanied by a new and, 
 as he possibly thought, better system of collection. It could not 
 have been he who first burdened the taxpayer with the payment of 
 tithes ; for this method of revenue was of immense antiquity in all 
 Hellenised lands and is not likely to have been unknown to the 
 kings of Pergamon. It is a method that, from its elastic nature, 
 bears less heavily on the agriculturist than that of a direct impost ; 
 for the payment is conditioned by the size of the crops and is 
 independent of the changing value of money. The chief objection 
 to the tax, considered in itself and apart from its accompanjdng 
 circumstances, was the immensity of the revenue which it yielded ; 
 the sums exacted by an Oriental despot were unnecessary for the 
 economical administration of Rome ; and the Roman administratioi 
 
 1 C. Gracchus ap. Gell. xi. lo Ego ipse, qui aput vos verba facio, uti vectigalii 
 vestra augeatis, quo facilius vestra commoda et rem publicam administrare possitis 
 non gratis prodeo. 
 
 'Vellei. ii. 6. 3 Nova constituebat portoria. 
 
123 B.C.] THE TAXATION OF ASIA 219 
 
 of half a century earlier might have reduced the tithe to a twentieth 
 as it had actually cut down the taxes of Macedonia to one-half of 
 their original amount. Sicily, indeed, furnished an example of the 
 tithe system ; but the expenses of a government decrease in pro- 
 portion to the area of administration, and Sicily could not furnish 
 the ample harbour dues and other payments in money, which should 
 have made the commercial wealth of Asia lighten the burden on 
 the holder of land. The rating of the new province was, in fact, 
 an admission of a change in the theory of imperial taxation. Asia 
 was not merely to be self-supporting ; her revenues were to yield a 
 surplus which should supplement the deficit of other lands, or aid 
 in the support of the proletariate of the capital. 
 
 The realisation of this principle may not have imposed heavier 
 burdens than Asia had known in the time of her kings. But the 
 fiction that the new dependency was to be maintained in a state 
 of " freedom," which even after the downfall of Aristonicus seems 
 to have exercised some influence on Roman policy, had led to a 
 suspension of regular taxation for the purposes of the central 
 government, which caused the Gracchan proposals to be regarded by 
 certain political circles at Rome in the light of a novelty, and prob- 
 ably of a hardship.^ They could hardly have borne either character 
 to the Asiatic provincials themselves. The war indemnities and 
 exactions which followed the great struggle, must have been a more 
 grievous burden than the system of taxation to which they were 
 inured : and it is incredible that during the six years which had 
 elapsed since the suppression of the revolt, or even the three years 
 that had passed since the completion of Aquillius's organisation, no 
 revenues had been raised by Rome from her new subjects for ad- 
 ministrative pm-poses. They probably had been raised, but in a 
 manner exasperating because irregular. What was needed was 
 a methodical system, which should abolish at once the fiction of 
 " freedom" and the reality of the exactions meted out at the caprice 
 of the governor of the moment. Such a system was supplied by 
 Gracchus, and it was doubtless reached by the application of the 
 characteristic Roman method of maintaining, whether for good or 
 ill, the principles of organisation which were already in existence 
 in the new dependency. 
 
 I Cf. App. Bell. Ciii. V. 4 (M. Antonius to the Asiatics) ois . . . ^TeAEire (pSpous 
 'PtniXif, fieBiiKaitey ijuv, fi^XP^, SriiiOK6iray avSpiiv Ko! irop' riiXtv yfvoiiivav, iSf7i(re <p6piiv, 
 
A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C, 123 
 
 The novelty of the Gracchan system lay, not in the manner of 
 taxation, but in the method adopted for securing the returns. 
 The greatest obstacle to the tithe system is the difficulty of in- 
 stituting an efficient method of collection. To gather in taxes 
 which are paid in kind and to dispose of them to the best advantage, 
 is a heavy burden for a municipality. The desire for a system of 
 contract is sure to arise, and in an Empire the efficient contractor 
 is more likely to be found in the central state than in any of its 
 dependencies. It was of this feeling that Gracchus took advantage 
 when he enacted that the taxes of Asia should be put up for auction 
 at Rome,'' and that the whole province should be regarded as a 
 single area of taxation at the great auction which the censor held 
 in the capital. It was certain that no foreign competition could 
 prevail in this sale of a kingdom's revenues. The right to gather 
 in the tithes could be purchased only by a powerful company of 
 Roman capitalists. The Decumani of Asia would represent the 
 heart and brain of the mercantile body ; they would form a senate 
 and a Principate amongst the Publicani.^ They would flood the 
 province with their local directors, their agents and their freedmen ; 
 and each station would become a centre for a banking business 
 which would involve individuals and cities in a debt, of which the 
 tithe was but a fraction. Nor need their operations be confined to 
 the dominions of Rome ; they would spread over Phrygia, rendered 
 helpless by the gift of freedom, and creep into the realms of the 
 neighbouring protected kings, safe in the knowledge that the-magic 
 name of " citizen of Rome " was a cover to the most doubtful trans- 
 action and a safeguard against the slightest punishment. The col- 
 lectors were liable to no penalties for extortion, for that crime could 
 be committed only by a Roman magistrate : and their possession of 
 the courts enabled them to raise the spectre of conviction on this 
 very charge before the eyes of any governor who might attempt to 
 check the devastating march of the battalions of commerce. 
 
 As merchants and bankers the Knights would be sufficiently pro- 
 tected by the judicial powers of their class ; but their operations 
 as speculators in tithes needed another safeguard. The contracts 
 made with the censor would extend over a period of five years, 
 
 ' Fronto ad Verum p. 125 (Naber) Gracchus locabat Asiam. Cic. in Verr. iii. 
 6. 12 Inter Siciliam ceterasque provincias, judices, in agrorum vectigalium ratione 
 hoc interest, quod ceteris aut impositum vectigal est certura . . . aut censoria 
 locatio constituta est, ut Asiae lege Sempronia. 
 
 ^ Decumani, hoc est, principes et quasi senatores publicanorum (Cic. in Verr. 
 ii. 71. 17s). 
 
123 B.C.] NEW BALANCE OF POWER 221 
 
 and the keenness of the competing companies would generally 
 ensure to the State the promise of an enormous sum for the pri- 
 vilege of farming the taxes. But the tithe might be reduced in 
 value by a bad hajvest or the ravages of war, and the successful 
 company might overreach itself in its eagerness to secure the con- 
 tract. The power of revising such bargains had once assured to 
 the senate the securest hold which it possessed over the mercantile 
 class.^ This complete dependence was now to be removed, and 
 Gracchus, while not taking the power of decision from the senate, 
 formulated in his law certain principles of remission which it was 
 expected to observe.^ 
 
 By these indirect and seemingly innocent changes in the relations 
 of the mercantile order to the senate, a new balance of power had 
 bee n created in t.hp Sta tp The Republic, according to the reflec- 
 tion of a later writer, had been given two heads,^ and this new 
 Janus, more ominous than the old, was believed to be the harbinger 
 of deadly conflict between the rival powers. In moments of calm 
 Gracchus may have believed that his reforms were but a renewed 
 illustration of that genius for compromise out of which the Roman 
 constitution had grown, and that he had but created new and 
 necessai'y defences against a recently developed absolutism ; but, in 
 the heat of the conflict into which he was soon plunged, his vin- 
 dictive fancy saw but the gloomier aspect of his new creation, and 
 he boasted that the struggle for the courts was a dagger which he 
 had hurled into the Forum, an instrument which the possessor 
 would use to mangle the body of his opponent* 
 
 But even these limitations of senatorial prerogative were not 
 deemed sufficient. A proposal was made which had the ingenious 
 scope of limiting the senate's control over the more important pro- 
 
 ' Polyb. vi. 17. 
 
 ' Schol. Bob. p. 259 Cum princeps esset publicanorum Cn, Plancii pater, et 
 societas eadem in exercendis vectigalibus gravissimo damno videretur adfecta, 
 desideratum est in senatu nomine publicanorum ut cum iis ratio putaretur lege Sem- 
 pronia, et reraissionis tantum fieret de summa pecunia, quantum aequitas postularet, 
 pro quantitate damnorum quibus fuerant hostili incursione vexati (60 B.C. ; cf. Cic. 
 ad Att. i. 17. g). 
 
 'Varro op. Non. p. 308 G. Equestri ordini judicia tradidit ac bicipitem civi- 
 tatem fecit discordiarum civilium fontem. Cf. Florus ii. 5 (iii. 17). 
 
 * Diod. xxxvii. g airsAoiirris ttjs avyicXiiTOv ir6\eiioy t^ Tpixxf Sio tV /i^TaBetriv 
 tSov KpmipiiaVi TsOapptiK&Ttas o%tos elirev Htl Khv aToddvaj ov BtaXeijl/u rh ^iipos atirh rrjs 
 irAeupSj tuv avyKKriTMuv SiripTjiietios. Diodorus has preserved the utterance in a 
 more intelligible form than' Cicero (de Leg. iii. g. 20 C. vero Gracchus . . . sicis 
 iis, quas ipse se projecisse in forum dixit, quibus digladiarentur inter se cives, nonne 
 omnem rei publicae statum permutavit ?). 
 
A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 123 
 
 vinces in favour of the magistrates, the equestrian order and the 
 people. One of the most valuable items of patronage which the 
 senate possessed was the assignment of the consular provinces. They 
 claimed the right of deciding which of the annual commands with- 
 out the walls should be reserved for the consuls of the year, and 
 by their disposition in this matter could reward a favourite with 
 wealth or power, and condemn a political opponent to impotence 
 or barren exile. This power had long been employed as a means 
 of coercing the two chief magistrates into obedience to the senate's 
 .will, and the equestrian order must have viewed with some alarm 
 the possibility of Asia becoming the prize of the candidates favoured 
 / by the nobility. Had Gracchus declared that the direct election 
 to provincial commands should henceforth be in the hands of the 
 people, the change would have been but a slight departure from 
 an admitted constitutional precedent ; for there is little more than 
 a technical difference between electing a man for an already ascer- 
 tained sphere of operations, as had been done in the cases of 
 Terentius Varro and the two Scipios during the Punic wars, and 
 attaching a special command to an individual already elected, 
 -^ut Gracchus preferred the traditional and indirect method. 
 He did not question the right of the "senate to decide what 
 provinces should be assigned to the consuls, but he enacted 
 that this decision should be made before these magistrates 
 were elected to office.^ The people would thus, in their annual 
 choice of the highest magistrates, be electing not only to a sphere 
 of administration at home, but to definite foreign commands as 
 well ; the prize which the senate had hitherto bestowed would be 
 indirectly the people's gift, and the nominees of the Comitia would 
 find themselves in possession of departments which were presumably 
 the most important that lay at the disposal of the senate. To 
 secure the finality of the arrangement made by the senate, and to 
 prevent this body subsequently reversing an awkward assignment 
 to which it had unwittingly committed itself, Gracchus ordained 
 that the tribu nician veto shou ld not be em£loyed against the 
 /senate's decision as to what provinces should be reserved for the 
 
 ' Cic. pro Domo g. 24 Tu provincias consulates, quas C. Gracchus, qui unus 
 maxime popularis fuit, non modo non abstulit a senatu, sed etiam, ut necesse esset 
 quotannis constitui per senatum decretas lege sanxit, eas lege Sempronia per 
 senatum decretas rescidisti. Sail. yug. 27 Lege Sempronia provinciae futuris 
 consulibus Numidia atque Italia decretae. Cic. de Prov. Cons. 2. 3 Decernendae 
 nobis sunt lege Sempronia duae (provinciae). Cf. ad Fam. i. 7. 10; pro Balbo 27. 61. 
 
23 B.C.] LAW ON THE CONSULAR PROVINCES 223 
 
 iiture consuls ; i for he knew that the tribune was often the in- 
 trument of the government, and that the suspensory veto of this 
 nagistrate could cause the question of assignment to drag on until 
 ifter the consuls were elected, and thus restore to the senate its 
 indent right of patronage. The change, although it produced the 
 lesired results of freeing the magistrates from subservience, the 
 nercantile order from a reasonable feai", and the people from the 
 Dain of seeing their favourite nominee rendered useless for the 
 purposes for which he was appointed, cannot be said to have 
 idded anything to the efficiency of provincial administration. It 
 aaay even be regarded as a retrograde step, as the commencement 
 oi that system of routine in provincial appointments, which re- 
 garded proved capacity for the government and defence of the 
 subjects of Rome as the last qualification necessary for foreign 
 command. The senate in its award may often have been swayed 
 by unworthy motives ; but it was sometimes moved by patriotic 
 fears. Of the two consuls it might send the one of tried military 
 ability to a province threatened by war and dismiss the mere 
 politician to a peaceful district. But now, without any regard 
 to present conditions or future contingencies, it was forced to as- 
 sign departments to men whose very names were unknown. The 
 people, in the exercise of their elective power, were acting almost 
 £is blindly as the senate ; for the issues of a Roman election were 
 often so ill-defined, its cross-currents, due to personal influence and 
 the power of the canvass, so strong and perplexing, that it was 
 rarely possible to predict the issue of the poll. On the other hand, 
 if there was a candidate so eminent that his return could be pre- 
 dicted as a certainty, the senate might assign some insignificant 
 spheres of administration as the provinces of the future consuls ; 
 and thus, in the one case where the decision might be influenced 
 by knowledge and reason, the Gracchan law was liable to defeat 
 its own ends. A further weakness of the enactment, from the 
 point of view of efficiency, was that it made no attempt to alter 
 the mode in which the designated provinces were to be occupied 
 by their claimants. If the consuls could not come to an agreement 
 as to which provincia each should hold, the chance of the lot 
 still decided a question on which the future fortunes of the empire 
 might turn. 
 
 • Cic. de Prov. Cons. 7. 17. 
 
224 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 123 
 
 It is a relief to turn from this work of demolition, which in 
 jE»ite of its many justifications is pervaded by a vindictive suspicion, 
 to some great constructive efforts by which Gracchus proved him- 
 self an enlightened and disinterested social reformer. He did not 
 view agrarian assignation as an alternative to colonisation, but 
 recognised that the industrial spirit might be awakened by new settle- 
 ments on sites favourable to commerce, as the agricultural interest 
 had been aroused by the planting of settlers on the desolated lands. 
 Gracchus was, indeed, not the first statesman to employ colonisation 
 as a remedy for social evils ; for economic distress and the hunger 
 for land had played their part from the earliest times in the military 
 settlements which Rome had scattered over Italy. But down to his 
 time strategic had preponderated over industrial motives, and he 
 was the first to suggest that colonisation might be made a means of 
 relief for the better classes of the urban proletariate, whose activities 
 were cramped and whose energies were stifled by the crowded life 
 and heated atmosphere of the city. His settlers were to be care- 
 fully selected. They were actually to be men who could stand the 
 test of an investigation into character.^ It seems clear that the 
 new opportunities were offered to men of the lower middle class, to 
 traders of cramped means or of broken fortunes. His other proteges 
 had been cared for in other ways ; the urban masses who lived on 
 the margin of destitution had been assisted by the corn law, and 
 the sturdy son of toil could look for help to the agrarian commis- 
 sion. Of the many settlements which he projected for Italy,^ two 
 which were actually established during his second tribunate^ occupied 
 maritime positions favourable for commerce. Scylacium, on the bay 
 which lies southward of the lapygian promontory, was intended to 
 revivify a decayed Greek settlement and to reawaken the industries 
 of the desolated Bruttian coast ; while Neptunia was seemingly the 
 name of the new entrep6t which he founded at the head of the 
 Tarentine Gulf. It was apparently established on the land which 
 
 1 The colonists were to be ol xopie'ffTaToi rav iroKiTav (Plut. C. Gracch. g). 
 
 ^Liv. Ep. Ix Legibus agrariis latis effecit ut complures coloniae in Italia 
 deducerentur. Cf. Plut. C. Gracch. 6. App. Bell. Civ. i. 23 ; Foundations at 
 Abellinum, Cadatia, Suessa Aurunca etc. are attributed to a lex Sempronia or lex 
 Graccana in Liber Coloniarum (Gromatici Lachmann) pp. 229, 233, 237, 238 ; cf. 
 pp. 216, 2ig, 228, 255. It is difficult to say whether they were products of the 
 Gracchan agrarian or colonial law. In either case, these foundations may have 
 been subsequent to his death, as neither law was repealed. 
 
 ' Vellei. I. 15 Et post annum (i.e. a year after the foundation of Fabrateria, see 
 p. 171) Scolacium Minervium, Tarentum Neptunia (coloniae conditae sunt). 
 
23 B.U.J SUnJiMJJ^S Ut UUI^UINISATIUIN SJSJS 
 
 lome had wrested from Tarentum, and may have originally formed 
 I, town distinct from this Greek city, once the great seaport of 
 jalabria, but retaining little of its former greatness since its partial 
 lestruction in the Punic wars.^ Its Hellenism was on the wane, 
 md this decline in its native civilisation may account for the fact 
 ;hat the new and the old foundations seem eventually to have been 
 nerged into one, and that Tarentum could receive a purely Latin 
 lonstitution after the close of the Social War.^ Its purple fisheries 
 ind rich wine-producing territory were worthy objects of the enter- 
 jrise of Gracchus. Capua was a still greater disgrace to the Roman 
 idministration than Tarentum. Its fertile lands were indeed culti- 
 vated by lessees of Rome and yielded a large annual produce to the 
 State. But the unredeemed site, on which had stood the pride of 
 southern Italy, was still a lamentable witness to the jealousy of the 
 jonqueror. Here Gracchus proposed to place a settlement ^ which 
 ;hrough its commercial promise might amply have compensated for 
 I loss of a portion of the State's domain. Neither he nor his brother 
 lad ever threatened the distribution of the territory of Capua, and 
 it is, therefore, probable that in this case he did not contemplate a 
 arge agricultural foundation, but rather one that might serve better 
 than the existing village to focus the commerce of the Campanian 
 plain. But the revenue from the domain, and the jealousy of Rome's 
 aid and powerful rival, which might be awakened in all classes, 
 were strong weapons in the hands of his opponents, and the renewal 
 jf Capua was destined to be the work of a later and more fortunate 
 leader of the party of reform. The colonising effort of Gracchus was 
 plainly one that had the regeneration of Italy, as well as the satis- 
 'action of distressed burgesses, as its object ; none of the three sites, 
 an which he proposed to establish his communes of citizens, possessed 
 it the time an urban centre capable of utilising the vast possibilities 
 )f the area in which it was placed. But this twofold object was 
 lot to be limited to Italy. He dreamed of transmarine enter- 
 jrise taking a more solid and more generally useful form than that 
 "urnished by the vagrant trader or the local agent of the capitahst.* 
 The idea and practice of colonisation across the sea were indeed no 
 lew ones ; isolated foundations for military purposes, such as Palma 
 md PoUentia in the Balearic Isles, were being planted by the direc- 
 
 * Forbiger Handb. der Alt. Geogr. ii. p. 503. 
 
 ^VAnnee ^pigraphique, i8g6, pp. 30, 31. ' Plut. C. Gracch. 8. 
 
 * Vellei. ii. 6 Novis coloniis replebat provincias. This may be wrong as a fact 
 )ut true as an intention. 
 
 15 
 
A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 123 
 
 tion of the government. But these were small settlements intended 
 to serve a narrow purpose ; they doubtless spread Roman customs 
 and formed a basis for Roman trade ; but, if these motives had 
 entered into their foundation, the experiment would have been tried 
 on a far larger scale. In truth the idea of permanent settlement 
 beyond the seas did not appeal either to the Roman character or to 
 the political theories of the governing classes. It is questionable 
 whether an imperial people, forming but a tiny minority amongst 
 its subjects, and easily reaping the fruits of its conquests, could ever 
 take kindly to the adventure, the initial hardships, and the lasting 
 exclusion from the dazzling life of the capital, which are implied in 
 permanent residence abroad. The Roman in pursuit of gain was a 
 restless spirit, who would voyage to any land that was, or was likely 
 to be, under imperial control, establish his banking house and villa 
 under any clime, and be content to spend the most active years of 
 his life in the exploitation of the alien ; but to him it was a living 
 truth that all roads led to Rome. The city was the nucleus of 
 enterprise, the heart of commerce ; and such sentiment as the trader 
 possessed was centred on the commercial life of the Forum and the 
 political devices on which it fed. Such a spirit is not favourable 
 to true colonisation, which implies a detachment from the affairs 
 of the mother city ; and it was not by this means, but rather by 
 the spontaneous evolution of natural centres for the teeming Italian 
 immigrants already settled in the provinces, that the Romanisa- 
 tion of the world was ultimately assisted. Consequently no great 
 pressure had ever been put on the government to induce it to relax 
 the principles which led it to look with indifference or disfavour on 
 the foundation of Roman settlements abroad. There was probably 
 a fear that the establishment of communities of Roman citizens 
 in the provinces might awaken the desire of the subject states to 
 participate in Roman rights. It was deemed better that the highest 
 goal of the provincial's ambition should be the freedom of his state, 
 and that he should never dream of that absorption into the ruling 
 body to which the Italian alone was permitted to aspire. Added 
 to this maxim of statecraft was one of those curious superstitions 
 which play so large a part in imperial politics and attain a show of 
 truth from the superficial reading of history. It was pointed out 
 by the wise that colonies had often proved more potent than their 
 parent states, that Carthage had surpassed Tyre, Massilia Phocaea, 
 Syracuse Corinth, and Cyzicus Miletus. In the same way a daughter 
 
123 B.C.] THE SETTLEMENT AT CARTHAGE 227 
 
 of Rome might wax greater than her mother, and the city that 
 governed Italy might be powerless to cope with a rebellious depen- 
 dency in the provinces.* This was not altogether an idle fear in 
 the earlier days of conquest ; for at any period before the war with 
 Pyrrhus a transmarine city of Italian blood and customs might have 
 proved a formidable rival. Nor at the stage which the empire had 
 reached at the time of Gracchus was it without its j ustification ; for 
 Rome was by no means a convenient centre for a government that 
 ruled in Asia as well as in Europe. It is more likely that the dread 
 of rivalry was due to the singular defects of the aspect and environ- 
 ment of Rome, of which its. citizens were acutely conscious, rather 
 than to the awkwardtiess of its geographical position ; but, had the 
 latter deficiency been realised, it would be unfair to criticise the 
 narrowness of view which failed to see that the change of a capital 
 does not necessarily involve the surrender of a government. But, 
 whether the objections implied in this superstition were shadowy 
 or well defined, they could not have been lessened by the choice 
 which was made by Gracchus and his friends of the site for their 
 new transmarine settlement. It was none other than Carthage, the 
 city which had been destroyed because the blessings of natiu-e had 
 made a mockery of conquest, the city that, if revived, would be 
 the centre of the granary of Rome. A proposal for the renewal of 
 Carthage under the name of Junonia was formulated by Rubrius, 
 one of the colleagues of Gracchus in his first tribunate.^ The 
 number of the colonists, which was less than six thousand, was 
 specified in the enactment, and the proportion of the emigrants 
 to the immense territory at his disposal rendered it possible for the 
 legislator to assign unusually large allotments of land. A better 
 and an inferior class of settlers were apparently distinguished, the 
 former of whom were to hold no less than two hundred jugera 
 apiece.^ The recipients of all allotments were to maintain them 
 in absolute ownership, a system of tenure which had hitherto been 
 confined to Italy being thus extended to provincial soil.* Caius 
 
 1 Vellei. ii. 7. 
 
 ^Plut. C. Gracch, 10 'PovPpiov ruv (rvjfapx^vTiitv evhs otKl^effdaiKapxv^^^tiypd^l/aV' 
 Tos ainipTifi4iiriv inrb iKtiTriavos. . . . Lex Acilia 1. 22 Queive I. Rubr[ia iii. vir col. 
 ded. creatus siet fueritve]. Cf. hex Agraria 1. 59. Oros. v. 12 L. Caecilio Metello 
 et Q. Titio (Scr. T. Quinctio) Flaminino coss. Carthago in Africa restitui jussa 
 vicensimo secundo demum anno quam fuerat eversa deductis civium Romanorum 
 familiis, quae earn incolerent, restituta et repleta est. Cf. Eutrop. iv. 21. 
 
 ' Mommsen in C. I. L. i. pp. 75 ff. 
 
 * Mommsen Lc. This was the tenure afterwards called that of the^ws Italicum. 
 
A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 123 
 
 Gracchus and Fulvius Flaccus were named amongst the triumvirs 
 who were to establish the new colony. ^ It is probable that Roman 
 citizens were alone considered eligible for the colonies both in Italy 
 and abroad, when these foundations were first proposed, and that 
 it was not until Gracchus had embarked on his enterprise of en- 
 franchising the Latins, that he allowed them to participate in the 
 benefits of his colonial schemes and thus indirectly acquire full 
 Roman citizenship.^ 
 
 But the commercial life of Italy might be quickened by other 
 means than the establishment of colonies whether at home or 
 abroad. Gracchus saw that the question of rapid and easy com- 
 munication between the existing towns was all important. The 
 great roads of Rome betrayed their military intent in the unswerv- 
 ing inflexibility of their course. The positions which they skirted 
 were of strategic, but not necessarily of industrial, importance. To 
 bring the hamlet into connection with the township, and the town- 
 ship into touch with the capital, a series of good cross-roads was 
 needed ; and it was probably to this object that the law of 
 Gracchus ^ was directed. But ease of communication may serve a 
 political as well as a commercial object. The representative char- 
 acter of the Comitia would be increased by the provision of facilities 
 for the journey to Rome ; and perhaps when Gracchus promulgated 
 his measure, there was already before his mind the possibility of the 
 extension of the franchise to the Latins, which would vastly in- 
 crease the numbers of the rural electorate. In any case, the measure 
 1 was one which tended to political centralisation, and Gracchus 
 j must have known that the attainment of this object was essential to 
 l_the unity and stability of a popular government. 
 
 The great enterprise was carried through with extraordinary 
 rapidity during his second tribunate. But the hastiness of the con- 
 struction did not impair the beauty of the work. We are told that 
 the roads ran straight and fair through the country districts, show- 
 ing an even surface of quarried stone and tight-packed earth. 
 Hollows were filled up, ravines and torrent beds were bridged, and 
 mounting-blocks for horsemen lay at short and easy distances on 
 both sides of the level course.^ Although the initial expense of 
 this construction may have borne heavily on the finances of the State, 
 it is probable that the future maintenance of the roads was provided 
 
 ' Liv. Ep. Ix ; App. Bell. Civ. i. 24. ' See p. 243, note 3. 
 
 '' Plut. C. Gracch. 6 ; App. Btll. Civ. i. 23. ■• Plut. C. Gracch. 7. 
 
123 B.C.] THE MAKING OF ROADS 229 
 
 for in other ways. The commerce which they fostered may have 
 paid its dues at toll-gates erected for the purpose : ^ and the 
 ancient Roman device of creating a class of settlers on the line of a 
 public road, for the purpose of keeping it in repair,^ was probably 
 extended. Road-making was often the complement of agrarian 
 assignation,^ and the two may have been employed concurrently 
 by Gracchus. It was the custom to assign public land on the 
 borders of a highway to settlers, the tenure of which was secured to 
 them and theu' heirs on condition of keeping the road in due 
 repair. Sometimes their own labour and that of their slaves were 
 reckoned the equivalent of the usual dues ; at other times the dues 
 themselves were used by the public authorities for the purpose. 
 Gracchus may thus have turned his agrarian law to an end 
 which was not contemplated by that of Tiberius. 
 
 The execution of the law must have been a heavy blow to the 
 power and prestige of the senate. Its control of the purse was in- 
 fringed and it ceased to be the sole employer of public labour. 
 For Gracchus, in defiance of the principle that the author of a 
 measure should not be its executant,* was his own road-maker, as his 
 brother Tiberius had been his own land commissioner. He was the 
 patron of the contractor and the benefactor of the Italian artisan. 
 The bounties which he now gave were the reward of labour, and not 
 subject to the criticism which had attended his earlier efforts for 
 the relief of poverty in Rome ; but some pretended to take the 
 sinister view that the bands of workmen by which he was surrounded 
 might be employed for a less innocent purpose than the making of 
 roads.* 
 
 The proceedings of Gracchus during his first year of office had 
 made it inevitable that he should hold the tribunate for a second 
 time. Enough had been performed to win him the ardent support 
 of the masses ; enough had been promised to make his return to 
 office desirable, not only to the people, but to the expectant cap- 
 italists. The legal hindrances to re-election had been removed, or 
 
 ' Nitzsch Die Gracchen p. 402. 
 
 ^ These are apparently the Viasii vicani of the lex Agraria. Sometimes the 
 service was performed by personal labour {operae), at other times a vectigal was 
 demanded. See Mommsen in C. I. L. I.e. 
 
 ^ Cic. ad Fam. viii. 6. 5 ; cf. Mommsen l.c. 
 
 * This was prohibited by a lex Licinia and a lex Aebutia which Cicero (de Leg. 
 Agr. ii. 8. 21) calls veteres tribuniciae. But it is possible that they were post- 
 Gracchan. See Mommsen Staatsr. ii. p. 630. 
 
 'App. Bell. Civ. i. 23 6 Se rpdxxos koI SSovs eTe/ivsv avh riiv IraKiav ixaxpisj 
 ir\Ti9os cpyoA(£j3wy Kal ^^etporexviov vip' eavT^ irotoifjteyoSt (ToI/judv 4s S ti kcAcvoi. 
 
230 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 123 
 
 could be evaded,^ and the continuity of power, which was essential 
 to the realisation of an adequate programme of reform, could now 
 for the first time be secured. In the present state of public feeling 
 there was little probability of the veto being employed by any one 
 of his future colleagues, although some of these would inevitably 
 be moderates or members of the senatorial party. But Gracchus 
 was eager that his cause should be represented in another depart- 
 ment of the State, which presented possibilities of assistance or of 
 mischief, and that the spectacle of the tribunate as the sole focus 
 of democratic sentiment, exalting itself in opposition to the higher 
 magistracies of the people, should, if possible, be averted. In one 
 of his addresses to the commons he said he had to ask a favour of 
 them. Were it granted, he would value it above all things ; should 
 they think good to refuse, he would bear no grudge against them. 
 Here he paused ; the favour remained undisclosed ; and he left popu- 
 lar imagination to revel in the possibilities of his claims. It was a 
 happy stroke ; for he had filled the minds of his auditors with a 
 gratifying sense of their own boundless power, and with suspicions 
 of illegal ambitions, with which it was well that they should be- 
 come familiar, but which one dramatic moment would for the time 
 dispel. His words were interpreted as a request for the consulship : 
 and the prevalent opinion is said to have been that he desired to 
 hold this office in combination with the tribunate. The time for 
 the consular elections was approaching and expectation was roused 
 to its highest pitch, when Gracchus was seen conducting Gains 
 Fannius into the Forum and, with the assistance of his own friends, 
 accosting the electors in his behalf^ The candidate was a man 
 whose political temperament Caius had had full opportunities of 
 studying. As a tribune he had been much under the influence of 
 Scipio Aemilianus," and as he rose slowly through the grades of 
 curule rank,* he must still have retained his character as a moder- 
 ate. He was therefore preferable to any candidate put forward by 
 the optimates : and the influence of Gracchus secured Fannius the 
 consulship almost at the moment when, without the trouble of a 
 canvass or even of a formal candidature, he himself secured his 
 second term of office. His position was further strengthened by 
 the return of the ex-consul Fulvius Flaccus, as one of his colleagues 
 in the tribunate. 
 
 'P. 165. 'P\at.C. Gracck.S. 
 
 ^ Cic. Brut. 26. 100. * Mominsen in C. I. L. i, p. 158. 
 
122 B.C.] SECOND TRIBUNATE OF GRACCHUS 231 
 
 It was now, when the grand programme was actually being 
 carried through, and the execution of the most varied measures was 
 being pressed on by a single hand, that the possibilities of personal 
 government were first revealed in Rome. The fiery orator was 
 less to be dreaded than the unwearied man of action, whose restless 
 energy was controlled by a clearness of judgment and concentration 
 of purpose, which could distinguish every item of his vast sphere of 
 administration and treat the task of the moment as though it were 
 the one nearest to his heart. Even those who hated and feared 
 Gracchus were struck with amazement at the practical genius which 
 he revealed ; while the sight of the leader in the midst of his count- 
 less tasks, surrounded by the motley retinue which they involved, 
 roused the wondering admiration of the masses.^ At one moment 
 he was being interviewed by a contractor for public works, at an- 
 other by an envoy from some state eager to secure his mediation ; 
 the magistrate, the artisan, the soldier and the man of letters 
 besieged his presence chamber, and each was received with the 
 appropriate word and the kindly dignity, which kings may acquire 
 from training, but men of kingly nature receive from heaven as a 
 seal of their fitness to rule. The impression of overbearing violence 
 which had been given by his speeches, was immediately dispelled by 
 contact with the man. The time of storm and stress had been 
 passed for the moment,' and in the fruition of his temporary power 
 the true character of Gracchus was revealed. The pure intellectual 
 enjoyment which springs from the sense of efficiency and the effec- 
 tive pursuit of a long-desired task, will not be shaken by the awkward 
 impediments of the moment. All the human instruments, which 
 the work demands, reflect the value of the object to which they 
 contribute : and Gracchus was saved from the insolent pride of the 
 patrician ruler and the helpless peevishness of the mere agitator 
 whom circumstances have thrust into power, by the fact that his 
 emotional nature was mastered by an intellect which had outlived 
 prejudice and had never known the sense of incapacity. By the 
 very character of its circumstances the regal nature was forced into 
 a style of life which resembled and foreshadowed that of the coming 
 monarchy. The accessibility to his friends and clients of every 
 grade was the pride of the Roman noble, and doubtless Gracchus 
 would willingly have modelled his receptions on the informal pattern 
 which sufficed the proudest patrician at the head of the largest 
 
 1 Plut. C. Gracch. 6. 
 
A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 122 
 
 clientele. But Gracchus's callers were not even limited to the 
 whole of Rome ; they came from Italy and the provinces : and it 
 was found to be essential to adopt some rules of precedence, which 
 would produce a methodical approach to his presence and secure 
 each of his visitors an adequate hearing. He was the first Roman, 
 we are told, to observe certain rules of audience. Some members 
 of the crowd which thronged his ante-chamber, were received singly, 
 others in smaller or in larger groups.^ It is improbable that the 
 mode of reception varied wholly with the official or social rank of 
 those admitted ; the nature of the client's business must also have 
 dictated the secrecy or publicity of the interview ; but the system 
 must have seemed to his baffled enemies a welcome confirmation of 
 their real or pretended fears — a symptom of the coming, if not 
 actual, overthrow of Republicanism, the suspicion of which might 
 one day be driven even into the thick heads of the gaping crowds, 
 who stood by the portals to gaze at the ever-shifting throng of 
 callers and to marvel at the power and popularity of their leader. 
 Had Gracchus been content to live in the present and to regard 
 his task as completed, it is just possible that the diverse interests 
 which he had so dexterously welded together might have enabled 
 him to secure, not indeed a continuity of power (for that would 
 have been as strenuously resisted by the middle as by the upper 
 class), but immediate security from the gathering conspiracy, the 
 preservation of his life, and the probability of a subsequent political 
 career. It is, however, difficult to conceive that the position which 
 Gracchus held could be either resigned or forgiven ; and, although 
 we cannot credit him with any conscious desire for holding a posi- 
 tion not admitted by the laws, yet his genius unconsciously led him 
 to identify the commonwealth with himself, while his mind, as re- 
 ceptive as it was progressive, would not have readily acquiesced in 
 the view that a political creation can at any moment be called com- 
 plete. The disinterested statesman will cling to power as tenaciously 
 as one devoured by the most sordid ambition : and even on the 
 lowest gi'ound of personal security, the possession of authority is 
 perhaps more necessary to the one than to the other. So indissol- 
 ubly blended are the power and the projects of a leader, that it is 
 
 ^ Seneca de Ben. vi. 34. 2 Apud nos primi omnium Gracchus et mox Livius 
 Drusus instituerunt segregate turbam suam et alios in secretum recipere, alios cum 
 pluribus, alios universes. Habuerunt itaque isti amicos primes, habuerunt secundos, 
 numquam veros. 
 
122 B.C.] THE FRANCHISE BILL 
 
 idle to raise the question whether personal motives played any part 
 in the project with which Gracchus was now about to delight his 
 enemies and alienate his friends. He took up anew the question of 
 the enfranchisement of the Italians — a question which the merest 
 pohtical tyro could have told him was enough to doom the statesman 
 who spoke even a word in its favour. But Caius's position was no 
 ordinary one, and he may have regarded his present influence as 
 sufficient to induce the people to accept the unpalatable measure, 
 the success of which might win for himself and his successors a wider 
 constituency and a more stable following. The error in judgment 
 is excusable in one who had never veiled his sympathy with the 
 Italian cause, and had hitherto found it no hindrance to his popu- 
 larity ; but so clear-sighted a man as Gracchus must have felt at 
 times that he was staking, not only his own career, but the fate of 
 the programme and the party which he had built up, on the chance 
 of securing an end, which had ceased to be regarded as the mere 
 removal of an obstacle and had grown to be looked on as the 
 coping-stone of a true reformer's work. 
 
 The scope of his proposal ^ was more moderate than that which 
 had been put forward by Flaccus. He suggested the grant of the 
 full rights of citizenship to the Latins, and of Latin rights to the'~Q 
 other Italian allies.' Italy was thus, from the point of view of— -^ 
 private law, to be Romanised almost up to the Alps ; ' while the 
 cities already in enjoyment of some or all of the private privileges 
 of the Roman, were to see the one anomaly removed, which created 
 an invidious distinction between them and the burgess towns, ham- 
 
 1 The name of the law was probably lex de sociis et nomine Latino. See Cic. 
 Brut. 26. 99. 
 
 'App. Bell. Civ. i. 23 ko! robs Aariyovs ^irl irdyra iK<i\ei ri 'Pafialav, us ovk 
 tinrpeirus ffuyyevetri TTJs fiovX.TJs aynffTTJuat Zwaiievtis ' tSjv Se-eTepwv ffvfiyAxav oTs ovk 
 i^if ij/TJipot' 4v rats 'Poffidicov x^^P'^'^^^^^^^ tp^peiVf 4SiSov tpepety airh rovSe, e-jrl r^ eX**** 
 KoL ToiitrSe 4v reus x^H^^Toyiais rav vifitav auri^ <TvvTe\Qvvras. The words i|/^(^ov K.r.\. 
 refer to the limited suffrage granted to Latin incolae (Liv. xxv. 3. 16) ; but the voting 
 power of his new Latins would be so small that the motive attributed to this measure 
 by Appian is improbable. See Strachan-Davidson in loc. Other accounts of 
 Gracchus's proposal ignore this distinction between Latins and Italians, e.g. Plu- 
 tarch (C. Gracch. 5) describes his law as iVoi^^^ovs tomv rots toA^tois roiy ItoAii^tos 
 and Velleius says (ii. 6) Dabat civitatem omnibus Italicis. 
 
 ' If we may trust Velleius (ii. 6) Dabat civitatem omnibus Italicis, extendebat 
 earn paene usque Alpis. Cisalpine Gaul was not yet a separate province, but it was 
 not regarded as a part of Italy. The Latin colonies between the Padus and the 
 Rubicon would certainly have received Roman rights, and this may have been the 
 case with a Latin township north of the Padus such as Aquileia. But it is doubtful 
 whether Latin rights would have been given to the towns between the Padus and 
 the Alps. These Transpadani received Latinitas in 89 B.C. (Ascon. in Pisonian. 
 P-3)- 
 
A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 122 
 
 pered their commerce, and imperilled their landed possessions. The 
 proposal had the further advantage that it took account of the 
 possible unwillingness of many of the federate cities to accept the 
 Roman franchise ; such a refusal was not likely to be made to the 
 offer of Latin rights : for the Latin community was itself a federate 
 city with its own laws, magistrates and courts, and the sense of 
 autonomy would be satisfied while many of the positive benefits of 
 Roman citizenship would be gained. Grades of privilege would 
 still exist in Italy, and a healthy discontent might in time be 
 fostered, which would lead all Italian communities to seek absorp- 
 tion into the great city. Past methods of incorporation might be 
 held to furnish a precedent ; the scheme proposed by Gracchus was 
 hardly more revolutionary than that which had^in the third and 
 at the beginning of the second centuries, resulted in the confer- 
 ment of full citizenship on the municipalities of half-burgesses. It 
 differed from it only in extending the principle to federate towns ; 
 but the rights of the members of the Latin cities bore a close 
 resemblance to those of the old ynunicipes, and they might easily 
 be regarded as already enjoying the partial citizenship of Rome. 
 The conferment of this partial citizenship on the other Italians, 
 while in no way destroying local institutions or impairing local 
 privileges, would lead to the possibility of a common law for the 
 whole of Italy, would enable every Italian to share in the benefits 
 of Roman business life, and appear in the court of the urban praetor 
 to defend such rights as he had acquired, by the use of the forms of 
 Roman law. The tentativeness of the character of Gracchus's pro- 
 posal, while recommending it as in harmony with the cautious 
 spirit of Roman development which had worked the great changes 
 of the past, may also have been dictated by the feeling, that the 
 more moderate scheme stood a better chance of acceptance by the 
 mob of Rome. All he asked was that the grievances which had 
 led to the revolt of Fregellae, and the dangers revealed by that 
 revolt, should be removed. The numbers of the added citizens 
 would not be overwhelming; for the majority of Italians all that 
 was asked was the possession of certain private rights, which had 
 been so ungrudgingly granted to communities in the past. Through- 
 out the campaign he probably laid more stress on the duty of 
 protecting the individual than on the right of the individual to 
 power. And the fact that the protection was demanded, not 
 against the Roman State, but against an oppressive nobility that 
 
122 B.C.] OPPOSITION TO THE BILL 235 
 
 disgraced it by a misuse of its powers, gave a democratic colouring 
 to the demand, and suggested a community of suffering, and there- 
 fore of sympathy, between the donors and recipients of the gift. 
 Even before his franchise law was before the world, he seems to 
 have been engaged in educating his auditors up to this view of the 
 case ; for it was probably in the speeches with which he introduced 
 his law for the better protection of the life of the Roman citizen,^ 
 that he illustrated the cruel caprice of the nobility by grisly stories 
 of the sufferings of the Italians. H9 had told of the youthful 
 legate who had had a cow-herd of Venusia scourged to death, as 
 an answer to the rustic's jesting query whether the bearers of the 
 litter were carrying a corpse : and of the consul who had scourged 
 the quaestor of Teanum Sidicinum, the man of noblest lineage in 
 his state, because the men's baths, in which the consul's wife had 
 elected to bathe, were not adequately prepared for her reception.^ 
 Since the objections of the populace to the extension of the fran- 
 chise were the result of prejudice rather than of reason, they 
 might be weakened if the sense of jealousy and distrust could be 
 diverted from the people's possible rivals to the common oppressors 
 of Rome and Italy. 
 
 The appeal to sentiment might have been successful, had not 
 the most sordid passions of the mob been immediately inflamed by 
 the oratory of the opponents of the measure. The most formidable 
 of these opponents was drawn from the ranks of Gracchus's own sup- 
 porters ; for the franchise question had again proved a rock which 
 could make shipwreck of the unity of the democratic party. His 
 proUgS, the consul Fannius, was not ashamed to appeal to the most 
 selfish instincts of the populace. " Do you suppose," he said, " that, 
 when you have given citizenship to the Latins, there will be any 
 room left for you at public gatherings, or that you will find a place 
 at the games or festivals .'' Will they not swamp everything with 
 their numbers ? " ^ Fannius, as a moderate, was an excellent ex- 
 ponent of senatorial views, and it was believed that many noble 
 hands had collaborated in the crushing speech which inflicted one 
 of its death-blows on the Gracchan proposal.* 
 
 The opportunity for active opposition had at last arrived, and 
 the senate was emboldened to repeat the measure which four years 
 
 1 P. 199. 2 c. Gracch. ap. Gell. x. 3. 3. 
 
 ' Fann. ap. Jul. Victor 6. 6. A speech of Fannius as consul against Caius 
 Gracchus is also mentioned by Charisius p. 143 Keil. 
 * Cic. Brut. 26. 99. 
 
A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 122 
 
 earlier had swept the aliens out of Rome. Perhaps in consequence 
 of powers given by the law of Pennus, the consul Fannius was em- 
 powered to issue an edict that no Italian, who did not possess a vote 
 in the Roman assemblies, should be permitted within five miles of 
 Rome at the time when the proposal about the franchise was to be 
 submitted to the Comitia.^ Caius answered this announcement 
 with a fiery edict of his own, in which he inveighed against the 
 consul and promised his tribunician help to any of the allies who 
 chose to remain in the city.^ The power which he threatened to 
 exercise was probably legal, since there is no reason to suppose that 
 the tribunician auxilium could be interposed solely for the assist- 
 ance of members of the citizen body ; ^ but he must have known that 
 the execution of this promise was impracticable, since the injured 
 party could be aided only by the personal interposition of the 
 tribune, and it was clear that a single magistrate, burdened with 
 many cares, and living a life of the most varied and strenuous 
 activity, could not be present in every quarter of Rome and in a 
 considerable portion of the surrounding territory. Even the co- 
 operation of his ardent colleague Flaccus could not have availed 
 for the protection of many of his Italian friends, and the course of 
 events so soon taught him the futility of this means of struggling 
 for Italian rights that when, somewhat later in the year, one of his 
 Italian friends was seized by a creature of Fannius before his eyes, 
 he passed by without an attempt at aid. His enemies, he knew, 
 were at the time eager for a struggle in which, when they had 
 isolated him from his Italian supporters, physical violence would 
 decide the day: and he remarked that he did not wish to give 
 them the pretext for the hand-to-hand combat which they desired.* 
 One motive, indeed, of the invidious edict issued by the consul 
 seems to have been to leave Gracchus to face the new position 
 which his latest proposal had created, without any external help ; 
 but as external help, if successfully asserted, could only have taken 
 the form of physical violence, there was reasonable ground for 
 holding that the decree excluding the Italians was the only means 
 
 lApp. Bell. Civ. i. 23. 
 
 ' Plut. C. Gracch. 12 i.vri^i67\Kev i Viios Siiypafi/ia KarriyopSiv toS {nrdrou, Kal 
 To7s (rufiiiidxots, &v liivwai, 0o7iS^iTeiv iirayyewififvos. The invective may have been 
 directed against Fannius. According to Appian (I.e.) both consuls had been in 
 structed by the senate to issue the edict. 
 
 ' If it had been hampered in this way, the judicial protection otperegrlni against 
 the judgments of the Praetor Peregrinus would have been impossible. 
 
 * Plut. C. Gracch. 12. 
 
!2 B.C.] FAILURE OF THE FRANCHISE BILL 237 
 
 preventing a serious riot or even a civil war. The senate 
 luld scarcely have feared the moral influence of the Italians on 
 le voting populace of Rome, and they knew that, in the present 
 ate of public sentiment, the constitutional means of resistance 
 [lich had failed against Tiberius Gracchus might be successfully 
 nployed against his brother. The whole history of the first 
 ibunate of Caius Gracchus proves the frank recognition of the 
 ct that the tribunician veto could no longer be employed against 
 measure which enlisted anything like the united support of the 
 ;opIe ; but, like all other devices for suspending legislation, its 
 nployment was still possible for opponents, and welcome even to 
 kewarm supporters, when the body politic was divided on an 
 nportant measure and even the allies of its advocate felt their 
 ratitude and their loyalty submitted to an unwelcome strain, 
 resistance by means of the intercession did not now require the 
 olid courage of an Octavius, and when Livius Drusus threatened 
 le veta»i there was no question of his deposition. Some nerve 
 ight have been required, had he made this announcement in the 
 lidst of an excited crowd of Italian postulants for the franchise ; 
 at from this experience he was saved by the precautionary measure 
 iken by the senate. It is probable that Drusus's announcement 
 lused an entire suspension of the legal machinery connected with 
 le franchise bill, and that its author never ventured to bring it to 
 le vote. 
 
 It is possible that to this stage of Gracchus's career belongs a 
 roposal which he promulgated for a change in the order of voting 
 i the Comitia Centuriata. The alteration in the structure of this 
 isembly, which had taken place about the middle of the third 
 intury, had indeed done much to equalise the voting power of the 
 pper and lower classes ; but the first class and the knights of the 
 ghteen centuries were still called on to give their suffrage first, 
 id the other classes doubtless voted in the order determined by 
 le property qualification at which they were rated. As the votes 
 r each century were separately taken and proclaimed, the absolute 
 lajority required for the decisions of the assembly might be 
 ttained without the inferior orders being called on to express their 
 idgment, and it was notorious that the opinion of later voters was 
 rofoundly influenced by the results already announced. Gracchus 
 
 'App. Bell. Civ. i. 23. 
 
A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 122 
 
 proposed that the votes of all the classes should be taken in an 
 order determined solely by the lot.^ His interest in the Comitia 
 Centuriata was probably due to the fact that it controlled the 
 consular elections, and a democratic consulship, which he had 
 vainly tried to secure by his support of Fannius, might be rendered 
 more attainable by the adoption of the change which he advocated. 
 The great danger of the coming year was the election of a consul 
 strongly identified with the senatorial interest — of a man like 
 Popillius who would be keen to seize some moment of reaction and 
 attempt to ruin the leaders of the reform movement, even if he 
 could not undo their work. It is practically certain that this pro- 
 posal of Gracchus never passed into law, it is questionable whether 
 it was ever brought before the Comitia. The reformer was im- 
 mediately plunged into a struggle to maintain some of his existing 
 enactments, and to keep the favour of the populace in the face of 
 insidious attempts which were being made to undermine their con- 
 fidence in himself. 
 
 The senate had struck out a new line of opposition, and they 
 had found a willing, because a convinced, instrument for their 
 schemes. It is inconceivable that a council, which reckoned within 
 itself representatives of all the noblest houses at Rome, should not 
 have possessed a considerable number of members who were in- 
 fluenced by the political views of a Cato or a Scipio, or by the 
 lessons of that humanism which had carried the Gracchi beyond the 
 bounds of Roman caution, but which might suffuse a more con- 
 servative mind with just sufficient enlightenment to see that much 
 was wrong, and that moderate remedies were not altogether beyond 
 the limits of practicability. But this section of senatorial opinion 
 could find no voice and take no independent action. It was 
 crushed by the reactionary spirit of the majority of the peers, and 
 frightened at the results to which its theories seem to lead, when 
 their cautious qualifications, never likely to find acceptance with the 
 masses, were swept away by more thorough-going advocates. But 
 the voice, which the senate kept stifled during the security of its 
 rule, might prove valuable in a crisis. The moderate might be 
 put forward to outbid the extremist ; for his moderation would 
 
 ^ [Sail.] de Rep. Ord. ii. 8 Magistratibus creandis baud mibi quidem apsurde 
 placet lex quam C. Gracchus in tribunatu promulgaverat, ut ex confusis quinque 
 classibus sorte centuriae vocarentur. Ita coaequatus dignitate pecunia, virtute 
 anteire alius alium properabit. 
 
122 BC] COUNTER-LEGISLATION OF DRUSUS 239 
 
 certainly lead him to respect the prejudices of the mob, while any 
 excesses, which he was encouraged or instructed to commit, need 
 not touch the points essential to political salvation, and might be 
 corrected, or left to a natural dissolution, when the crisis had been 
 passed and the demagogue overthrown. The instrument chosen by 
 the senate was Marcus Livius Drusus,^ the tribune who had threat- 
 ened to interpose his veto on the franchise bill. There is no reason 
 why the historian should not treat the political attitude of this 
 rival of Gracchus as seriously as it seems to have been treated 
 by Drusus's illustrious son, who reproduced, and perhaps borrowed 
 from his father's career, the combination of a democratic propa- 
 ganda, which threw specious unessentials to the people, with the 
 design of maintaining and strengthening the rule of the nobility. 
 The younger Drusus was, it is true, a convert to the Italian claims 
 which his father had resisted ; but even this advocacy shows de- 
 velopment rather than change, for the party represented by 
 the elder Drusus was by no means blind to the necessity for 
 a better security of Italian rights. The difference between the 
 father and the son was that the one was an instrument and the 
 other an agent. But a man who is being consciously employed as 
 an instrument, may not only be thoroughly honest, but may reap a 
 harvest of moral and mental satisfaction at the opportunities of 
 self-fulfilment which chance has thrown in his way. The position 
 may argue a certain lack of the sense of humour, but is not neces- 
 sarily accompanied by any conscious sacrifice of dignity. Certainly the 
 public of Rome was not in the secret of- the comedy that was being 
 played. It saw only a man of high birth and aristocratic culture, 
 gifted with all the authority which great wealth and a command of 
 dignified oratory can give,^ approaching them with bounties greater 
 in appearance than those which Gracchus had recently been willing 
 to impart, attaching no conditions to the gift and, though speaking 
 in the name of the senate, conveying no hint of the deprivation of 
 any of the privileges that had so recently been won. And the new 
 largess was for the Roman people alone ; it was not depreciated by 
 the knowledge that the blessings, which it conferred or to which it 
 was added, would be shared by rivals from every part of Italy. 
 An aspirant for favour, who wished to enter on a race with the 
 
 1 Plut. C. Gracch. 8. 
 
 ^Vir et oratione gravis et auctoritate (Cic. Brut. 28. 109) ^flei Se kuI \6y<f ko! 
 TT\oJiTif Tots fiiAiara Ti/iw/teVois koI Svya/iivois arh Toiruv ivi/uWos (Plut. C. Gracch. 8). 
 
240 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 122 
 
 recent type of papular leader, must inevitably think of provision 
 for the poor ; but a mere copy or extension of the Gracchan pro- 
 posals was impossible. No measure that had been fiercely opposed 
 by the senate could be defended with decency by the representative, 
 and, as Drusus came in after time to be styled, the " advocate " of 
 that body.^ Such a scheme as an extension of the system of com 
 distribution would besides have shocked the political sense both of 
 the patron and his clients, and would not have served the political 
 purposes of the latter, since such a concession could not easily have 
 been rescinded. The system of agrarian assignation, in the form 
 in which it had been carried through by the hands of the Gracchi, 
 had at the moment a complete machinery for its execution, and 
 there was no plausible ground for extending this measure of 
 benevolence. The older system of colonisation was the device 
 which naturally occurred to Drusus and his advisers, and the 
 choice was the more attractive in that it might be employed in a 
 manner which would accentuate certain elements in the Gracchan 
 scheme of settlement that had not commended themselves to 
 public favour. The masses of Rome desired the monopoly of every 
 prize which the favourite of the moment had to bestow; but 
 Gracchus's colonies were meant for the middle class, not for the very 
 poor, and the preliminary to membership of the settlements was an 
 uncomfortable scrutiny into means, habits and character.^ The 
 masses desired comfort. Capua may have pleased them, but they 
 had little liking for a journey across the sea to the site of desolated 
 Carthage. The very modesty of Gracchus's scheme, as shown in the 
 number of the settlements projected and of the colonists who were 
 to find a home in each, proved that it was not intended as a benefit 
 to the proletariate as a whole. Drusus came forward with a pro- 
 posal for twelve colonies, all of which were probably to be settled 
 on Italian and Sicilian soil ; ' each of these foundations was to pro- 
 vide for three thousand settlers, and emigrants were not excluded 
 on the ground of poverty. An oblique reflection on the disinterest- 
 edness of Gracchus's efforts was further given in the clause which 
 created the commissioners for the foundation of these new colonies. 
 Drusus's name did not appear in the list. He asked nothing for 
 
 'Suet. Tib. 3 Ob eximiam adversus Gracchos operara " patronus senatus" 
 dictus. 
 
 "Plut. C. Gracch. g. 
 
 ' App. Bell. Civ. i. 35. See p. 283, note. 
 
122 B.C.] DRUSUS'S COLONIAL SCHEME 241 
 
 himself, nor would he touch the large sums of money which must 
 flow through the hands of the commissioners for the execution of so 
 vast a scheme.^ The suspicion of self-seeking or corruption was easily 
 aroused at Rome, as it must have been in any state where such large 
 powers were possessed by the executive, and where no control of the 
 details of execution or expenditure had ever been exercised by the 
 people ; and Gracchus's all-embracing energy had betrayed him into 
 a position, which had been accepted in a moment of enthusiasm, but 
 which, disallowed as it was by current sentiment and perhaps by the 
 law,^ might easily be shaken by the first suggestion of mistrust. 
 
 The scheme of Drusus, although it proved a phantom and per- 
 haps already possessed this elusive character when the senate pledged 
 its credit to the propounder of the measure, was of value as initiat- 
 ing a new departure in the history of Roman colonisation. Even 
 Gracchus had not proposed to provide in this manner for the dregs 
 of the city, and the first suggestion for forming new foundations 
 simply for the object of depleting the plethora of Rome — the pur- 
 pose real or professed of many later advocates of colonisation — 
 was due to the senate as an accident in a political game, to Drusus 
 perhaps as the result of mature reflection. Since his proposal, 
 which was really one for agrarian assignation on an enormous scale, 
 was meant to compete with Gracchus's plan for the founding of 
 colonies, it was felt to be impossible to burden the new settlers with 
 the payment of dues for the enjoyment of their land. Gracchus's 
 colonists were to have full ownership of the soil allotted to them, 
 and Drusus's could not be placed in an inferior position. But 
 the existence of thirty-six thousand settlers with free allotments 
 would immediately suggest a grievance to those citizens who, under 
 the Gracchan scheme of land-assignment, had received their lots 
 subject to the condition of the payment of annual dues to the 
 State. If the new allotments were to be declared free, the burden 
 must be removed from those which had already been distributed.* 
 Drusus and the senate thus had a logical ground for the step which 
 seems to have been taken, of relieving all the land which had been 
 distributed since the tribunate of the elder Gracchus from the pay- 
 
 ' Plut. C. Gracch. lo. ^ P. 229, note 4. 
 
 ' Plut. C. Gracch. g Ai$ios Si koI r^y laro^opkv rair-nv (which had been imposed 
 by the Gracchan laws) rSiv vei/ia/ievav cupaifiav ffpetrKev outoij. The tense of 
 vfifiaiiffav seems to show that the Gracchan as well as the Livian settlers are 
 meant. See Underbill in loc. In any case, the reimposition of the vectigal on the 
 allotments by the law of iig (App. Bell. Civ. i. 27) proves that it had been remitted 
 before this date. 
 
 16 
 
242 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 122 
 
 ment of vectigal. It was a popular move, but it is strange that 
 the senate, which was for the most part playing with promises, 
 should have made up its mind to a definite step, the taking of 
 which must have seriously injured the revenues of the State. But 
 perhaps they regarded even this concession as not beyond recall, 
 and they may have been already revolving in their minds those 
 tortuous schemes of land-legislation, which in the near future were 
 to go far to undo the work of the reformers. 
 
 The senate also permitted Drusus to propose a law for the pro- 
 tection of the Latins, which should prove that the worst abuses on 
 which Gracchus dwelt might be removed without the gift of the 
 franchise. The enactment provided that no Latin should be 
 scourged by a Roman magistrate, even on military service.^ Such 
 summary punishment must always have been illegal when inflicted 
 on a Latin who was not serving as a soldier under Roman command 
 and was within the bounds of the jurisdiction of his own state ; the 
 only conceivable case in which he could have been legally exposed 
 to punishment at the hands of Roman officials in times of peace, was 
 that of his committing a crime when resident or domiciled in Rome. 
 In such circumstances the penalty may have been summarily in- 
 flicted, for the Latins as a whole did not possess the right of appeal 
 to the Roman Comitia.^ The extension of the magisterial right of 
 coercion over the inhabitants of Latin towns, and its application in 
 a form from which the Roman citizen could appeal, were mere abuses 
 of custom, which violated the treaties of the Latin states and were 
 not first forbidden by the Livian law. But the declaration that 
 the Latin might not be scourged by a Roman commander even on 
 military service, was a novelty, and must have seemed a somewhat 
 startling concession at a time when the Roman citizen was himself 
 subject to the fullest rigour of martial law. It was, however, one 
 that would appeal readily to the legal mind of Rome, for it was a 
 different matter for a Roman to be subject to the martial law of his 
 own state, and for the member of a federate community tp be sub- 
 jected to the code of this foreign power. It was intended that 
 henceforth the Latin should suffer at least the degi-ading punish- 
 ment of scourging only after the jurisdiction and on the bidding of 
 his own native commander ; but it cannot be determined whether 
 
 ' iirus firiS' iirl ffTpardas efj; Tiyo Aarlyav ^oifiSois aiKiaaaBai (Plut. C. Gracch. 9). 
 
 ^ The lex Acilia Repetundarum grants them the right of appeal as an alternative 
 to citizenship as a reward for successful prosecution. Cf, the similar provision in 
 the franchise law of Flaccus (p. 168). 
 
122 B.C.] PROTECTION OF THE LATINS 243 
 
 he was completely exempted from the military jurisdiction of the 
 Roman commander-in-chief — an exemption which might under many 
 circumstances have proved fatal to military discipline and efficiency. 
 There is every reason to suppose that this law of Drusus was passed, 
 and some reason to believe that it continued valid until the close 
 of the Social War destroyed the distinctions between the rights of 
 the Latin and the Roman. Its enactment was one of the cleverest 
 strokes of policy eflFected by Drusus and the senate ; for it must 
 have satisfied many of the Latins, who were eager for protection 
 but not for incorporation, while it illustrated the weakness, and as 
 it may have seemed to many, the dishonesty, of Gracchus's seeming 
 contention that abuses could only be remedied by the conferment 
 of full political rights. The whole enterprise of Drusus fully at- 
 tained the immediate effect desired by the senate. The people were 
 too habituated to the rule of the nobility to remember grievances 
 when approached as friends ; the advances of the senate were received 
 in good faith, and Drusus might congratulate himself that a repre- 
 sentative of the Moderates had fulfilled the appropriate task of a 
 mediator between opposing factions.^ 
 
 We might have expected that Gracchus, in the face of such for- 
 midable competition, would have stood his ground in Rome and 
 would have exhausted every eiFort of his resistless oratory in ex- 
 hibiting the dishonesty of his opponents and in seeking to reclaim 
 the allegiance of the people. But perhaps he held that the effective 
 accomplishment of another great design would be a better object- 
 lesson of his power as a benefactor arid a surer proof of the reality 
 of his intentions, as contrasted with the shadowy promises of Drusus. 
 He availed himself of his position of triumvir for the foundation 
 of the colony of Junonia — an office which the senate gladly allowed 
 him to accept — and set sail for Africa to superintend in person the 
 initial steps in the creation of his great transmarine settlement.^ 
 His original plan was soon modified by the opposition which it en- 
 countered ; the promised number of allotments was raised to six 
 thousand, and Italians were now invited to share in the foundation.^ 
 
 ^ Plut. C. Gracch. g. 
 
 'Appian (Bell. Civ. i. 24) says that Gracchus was accompanied by Fulvius 
 Flaccus. Plutarch (C. Gracch. 10) implies that the latter stayed at Rome. 
 
 'App. I.e. Appian represents this measure as having been proposed after 
 the return of the commissioners to Rome. The words of Plutarch (C. Graech. 8) 
 atrnpriiffaTO rh 'ir\7J6os . . . RaKiev . . . 4irl KQivtovit^ iroXiTeias Toiis Aarivovs probably 
 refer to an invitation of the Latins to share in these citizen colonies. 
 
b4 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 128 
 
 jth of these steps were doubtless the result of the senate's dalliance 
 ;th colonial schemes and with the Latins, but the latter may also 
 1 interpreted as a desperate efFort to get the colony under weigh 
 
 any cost. Fulvius Flaccus, who was also one of the colonial 
 mmissioners, either stayed at Rome during the entire period of 
 s colleague's absence or paid but the briefest visit to Africa ; for 
 > is mentioned as the representative of the party's interests in 
 ome during Gracchus's residence in the province.^ The choice of 
 le delegate was a bad one. Not only was Flaccus hated by the 
 nate, but he was suspected by the people. These in electing him 
 the tribunate had forgiven his Italian leanings when the Italian 
 ,use was held to be extinct ; but now the odium of the franchise 
 ovement clung to him afresh, and suspicion was rife that the se- 
 et dealings with the allies, which were believed to have led to the 
 itbreak of Fregellae, had never been interrupted or had lately been 
 newed. The difficulties of his position were aggravated by faults 
 
 manner. He possessed immense courage and was an excellent 
 ;hter ; but, like many men of combative disposition, he was tact- 
 3s and turbulent. His reckless utterances increased the distrust 
 ith which he was regarded, and Gracchus's popularity necessarily 
 aned with that of his lieutenant.'' 
 
 Meanwhile the effort was being made to reawaken Carthage 
 id to defy the curse in which Scipio had declared that the soil of 
 le fallen city should be trodden only by the feet of beasts. No 
 ruple could be aroused by the division of the surrounding lands ; 
 le site where Carthage had stood was alone under the ban,^ and had 
 racchus been content with mere agrarian assignment or had he 
 tablished Junonia at some neighbouring spot, his opponents would 
 ive been disarmed of the potent weapon which superstition invari- 
 )ly supplied at Rome. As it was, alarming rumours soon began 
 I spread of dreadful signs which had accompanied the inauguration 
 ' the colony.* When the colonists according to ancient custom 
 ere marching to their destined home in military order with 
 andards flying, the ensign which headed the column was caught 
 Y a furious wind, torn from the grip of its resisting bearer, ahd 
 lattered on the ground. When the altars had been raised and 
 le victims laid upon them, a sudden storm-blast caught the offer- 
 
 ' See p. 243, note 2. » Plut. C. Gracch. lo. 
 
 ' Momrasen in C. I. L. l,c. * Plut. C. Gracch. ii. 
 
122 B.C.] GRACCHUS IN AFRICA 245 
 
 ings and hurled them beyond the boundaries of the projected city 
 which had recently been cut by the share. The boundary-stones 
 themselves were visited by wolves, who seized them in their teeth 
 and carried them off in headlong flight. The reality of the last 
 alarming phenomenon, perhaps of all these omens, was vehemently 
 denied by Gracchus and by Flaccus ; ^ but, even if the reports now 
 flying abroad in Rome had any basis in fact, the circumstances of 
 the foundation did not deter the leader nor frighten away his 
 colonists. Gracchus proceeded with his work in an orderly and 
 methodical manner, and when he deemed his personal supervision 
 no longer essential, returned to Rome after an absence of seventy 
 days. He was recalled by the news of the unequal contest that 
 was being waged between the passionate Fulvius and the adroit 
 Drusus. Clearly the circumstances required a cooler head than 
 that possessed by Flaccus; and there was the threat of a still 
 further danger which rendered Gracchus's presence a necessity. 
 The consulship for the following year was likely to be gained by 
 one of the most stalwart champions of ultra-aristocratic views. 
 Lucius Opimius had been defeated when seeking that office in the 
 preceding year, chiefly through the support which Gracchus's 
 advocacy had secured to Fannius. Now there was every chance 
 of his success ; ^ for Opimius's chief claim to distinction was the 
 prompt action which he had shown in the conquest of PVegellaej 
 and the large numbers of the populace who detested the Italian 
 cause were likely to aid his senatorial partisans in elevating him to 
 the consulship. The consular elections might exercise a reactionary 
 influence on the tribunician ; and, if Gracchus's candidature was a 
 failure, he might be at the mercy of a resolute opponent, who would 
 regard his destruction as the justifiable act of a saviour of society. 
 When Caius returned, the people as a whole seemed more 
 apathetic than hostile. They listened with a cold ear both to 
 appeals and promises, and this coldness was due to satiety rather 
 than suspicion. They had been promised so much within the last 
 few months that demagogism seemed to be a normal feature of 
 existence, and no keen emotion was stirred by any new appeal to 
 their vanity or to their interests. Such apathy, although it may 
 favour the military pretender, is more to be dreaded than actual 
 
 ' App. Bell. Civ. i. 24. According to Appian, the wolf event occurred after 
 Gracchus had quitted Africa. 
 ^Plut. C.Gracch. 11. 
 
6 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 122 
 
 Bcontent by the man who rules merely by the force of character 
 d eloquence. Criticism may be met and faced, and, the keener 
 is, the more it shows the interest of the critics in their leader. 
 !ricles was hated one moment, deified the next ; but no man could 
 ofess to be indifferent to his personality and designs. Gracchus 
 ok the lesson to heart, and concentrated his attention on the one 
 iss of his former supporters, whose daily life recalled a signal 
 nefit which he had conferred, a class which might be moved by 
 atitude for the past and hope for the future. One of his first 
 ts after his return was to change his residence from the Palatine 
 a site lying below the Forum.' Here he had the very poor as 
 s neighbours, the true urban proletariate which never dreamed of 
 ailing itself of agrarian assignments or colonial schemes, but set 
 ?ery real value on the corn-distributions, and may have believed 
 at their continuance would be threatened by Gracchus's fall from 
 wer. It is probable, however, that, even without this motive, 
 8 characteristic hatred which is felt by the partially destitute 
 r the middle class, may have deepened the affection with which 
 racchus was regarded by the poorer of his followers, when they 
 (V him abandoned by the more outwardly respectable of his sup- 
 rters. The present position of Gracchus showed clearly that the 
 werful coalition on which he had built up his influence had 
 imbled away. From a leader of the State he had become but 
 B leader of a faction, and of one which had hitherto proved itself 
 werless to resist unaided a sudden attack by the government. 
 
 From this democratic stronghold he promulgated other laws, 
 B tenor of which is unknown, while he showed his sympathy with 
 e lower orders in a practical way which roused the resentment of 
 i fellow-magistrates.^ A gladiatorial show was to be given in 
 e Forum on a certain day, and most of the magistrates had erected 
 inds, probably in the form of a rude wooden amphitheatre, which 
 ey intended to let on hire.' Gracchus chose to consider this 
 Dceeding as an infringement of the people's rights. It was per- 
 ps not only the admission by payment, but the opinion that the 
 closure unduly narrowed the area of observation and cut off all 
 !w of the performance from the surrounding crowd,* that aroused 
 
 1 Plut. C. Gracch. 12. 
 
 ' Ibid. ffvyfTvx^ 5' aiiT^ Kal trphs robs ffvydpxovras iy opyrj yevetrOai. (rwdpxoyrat 
 :e is not limited to his colleagues in the tribunate. 
 ^^ffitireovy (Plut. I.C.), probably to contractors who would sublet the seats. 
 * Beesly The Gracchi, Marius and Sulla p. 53 . 
 
122 B.C.] GRACCHUS FAILS TO BE RE-ELECTED 247 
 
 Gracchus's protest, and he bade the magistrates pull down the 
 erection that the poorer classes might have a free view of the 
 spectacle. His request was disregarded, and Gracchus prepared a 
 surprise for the obstinate organisers. On the very night before the 
 show he sallied out with the workmen that his official duties still 
 placed at his disposal ; the tiers of seats were utterly demolished, 
 and when day dawned the people beheld a vacant site on which 
 they might pack themselves as they pleased. To the lower orders 
 it seemed the act of a courageous champion, to the officials the 
 wild proceeding of a headstrong demagogue. It could not have im- 
 proved Gracchus's chances with the moneyed classes of any grade ; 
 he had merged their chances of enjoyment with that of the crowd 
 and violated their sense of the prerogatives of wealth. 
 
 But, although Gracchus may have been acting violently, he was 
 not acting blindly. He must have known that his cause was almost 
 lost, but he must also have been aware that the one chance of 
 success lay in creating a solidarity of feeling in the poorer classes, 
 which could only be attained by action of a pronounced and vigorous 
 type. To what extent he was successful in reviving a following 
 which furnished numerical support superior, or even equivalent to, 
 the classes alienated by his conduct or won over by the intrigues of 
 his opponents, is a fact on which we have no certain information. 
 Only one mention has been preserved of his candidature for a third 
 tribunate : and this narrative, while asserting the near approach 
 which Gracchus made to victory, confesses the uncertainty of the 
 accounts which had been handed down of the election. The story 
 ran that he really gained a majority of the votes, but that the 
 tribune who presided, with the connivance of some of his colleagues, 
 basely falsified the returns.^ It is a story that cannot be tested on 
 account of our ignorance of the precautions taken, and therefore of 
 the possibilities of fraud which might be exhibited, in the elections 
 of this period. At a later period actual records of the voting were 
 kept, in case a decision should be doubted ; ^ and had an appeal to 
 a scrutiny been possible at this time, Gracchus was not the man 
 to let the dubious result remain unchallenged. But the story, even 
 if we regard it as expressing a mere suspicion, suggests the pro- 
 found disappointment of a considerable class, which had given its 
 
 ^ ^Iffupav juev avr$ trKeiffriav yevofievuy, aSixus 5e Kai KoKoipyus Tav ffuyapx^VTuyv 
 TroiTiffaiifvaiv TJ)v avayip€v<nv leal kydSei^iv. (Plut. I.e.) 
 » Cic. in Pis. 15. 36 ; Varro R. R. iii. 5. 18. 
 
8 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 122 
 
 ^ourite its united support and received the news of his defeat 
 th surprise and resentment. It breathes the poor man's suspicion 
 
 the chicanery of the rich, and may be an index that Gracchus 
 ;ained the confidence of his humbler supporters until the end. 
 
 The defeat, although a terrible blow, did not crush the spirit 
 
 Gracchus ; it only rendered it more bitter and defiant. It was 
 w that he exulted openly in the destructive character of his work, 
 d he is said to have answered the taunts of his enemies by telling 
 em that their laughter had a painful ring, and that they did not 
 b know the great cloud of darkness which his political activity 
 d wrapped around their lives.^ The dreaded danger of Opimius's 
 iction was soon realised, and members of the newly appointed 
 bunician college were willing to put themselves at the orders of 
 5 senate. The surest proof that Gracchus had fallen would be 
 3 immediate repeal of one of his laws, and the enactment which 
 ,s most assailable was that which, though passed under another's 
 me, embodied his project for the refoundation of Carthage. This 
 ibrian law might be attacked on the ground that it contravened 
 2 rules of religious right, the violation of which might render any 
 blic act invalid ; ^ and the stories which had been circulated of 
 8 evil omens that had attended the establishment of Junonia, 
 re likely to cause the scruples of the senate to be supported 
 
 the superstition of the people. Gracchus still held an official 
 sition as a commissioner for colonies, if not for land-distribution 
 d the making of roads, but none of these positions gave him the 
 thority to approach the people or the power to offer efl^ective 
 ;al resistance to the threatened measure ; any further opposition 
 ght easily take the form of a breach of the peace by a private 
 lividual and give his enemies the opportunity for which they were 
 tching ; and it was therefore with good reason that Gracchus at 
 it determined to adopt a passive attitude in the face of the pro- 
 sal of the tribune Minucius Rufus for the repeal of the Rubrian 
 v.^ Even Cornelia seems to have counselled prudence, and it 
 s perhaps this crisis in her son's career which drew from her the 
 ssionate letter, in which the mother triumphs over the patriot 
 d she sees the ruin of the Republic and the madness of her house 
 
 ^ Sjs ^apSoytov yeKoyra yeKuffiv, ov yiyv^ffKOVTes^ Sirov auTo7f (Tk6tos 4k rS>v outoS 
 KKcxuTai TToXiTeifxaTuv. (Plut. l.c.) 
 ^ Cic. pro Caec. 33. 95 ; pro Domo 40. 106. 
 ' [Victor] de Vir. III. 65. 
 
121 B.C.] DEATH OF ANTULLIUS 249 
 
 in the loss which would darken her declining years. ^ This protest is 
 more than consistent with the story that she sent country folk * to 
 swell the following and protect the person of her son, when she saw 
 that he would not yield without another effort to maintain his cause. 
 The change of attitude is said to have been forced on Gracchus by the 
 exhortations of his friends and especially of the impetuous Fulvius. 
 The organisation of a band such as Gracchus now gathered round 
 him, although not in itself illegal, was a provocation to riot ; and 
 a disastrous incident soon occurred which gave his opponents the 
 handle for which they had long been groping. At the dawn of the 
 day, on which the meeting was to be held for the discussion, and 
 perhaps for the voting, on the repeal of the threatened law, Gracchus 
 and his followers ascended to the Capitol, where the opposite party 
 was also gathering in strength. It seems that the consul Opimius 
 himself, although he could not preside at the final meeting of the 
 assembly, which was purely plebeian, was about to hold a Contio ' 
 or to speak at one summoned by the tribunes. Gracchus himself 
 did not immediately enter the area in which the meeting was to 
 be held, but paced the portico of the temple buried in his thoughts.* 
 What immediately followed is differently told ; but the leading facts 
 are the same in every version.* A certain AntuUus or Antullius, 
 spoken of by some as a mere unit amongst the people, described 
 by others as an attendant or herald of Opimius, spoke some words 
 — the Gracchans said, of insolence : their opponents declared, of 
 patriotic protest — to Gracchus or to Fulvius, at the same time 
 stretching out his arm to the speaker whom he addressed. The 
 gesture was misinterpreted, and the unhappy man fell pierced with 
 iron pens, the only weapons possessed by the unarmed crowd. There 
 could be no question that the first act of violence had come from 
 Gracchus's supporters, and the end for which Opimius had waited 
 had been gained. Even the eagerness with which the leader had 
 
 ' Cornelia ap. Corn. Nep. ft. i6 Ne id quidem tam breve spatium (sc. vitae) 
 potest opitulari quin et mihi adversere et rem publicam profliges ? Denique quae 
 pausa erit? 'Ecquando desinet familia nostra insanire ? Ecquando modus ei rei 
 haberi poterit ? Ecquando desinemus et habentes et praebentes molestiis insistere ? 
 Ecquando perpudescet miscenda atque perturbanda re publica ? 
 
 ^ i>s St) eepurrds (Plut. C. Gracch, 13). 
 
 'Plutarch (I.e.) says that the consul had "sacrificed" (BiaavTos) and, if this is 
 correct, Opimius must have summoned the meeting. 
 
 ^App. Bell. Civ. i. 25. 
 
 ^ Plut. C. Gracch. 13 ; App. Bell. Civ. i. 25 ; [Victor] de Vir. III. 65. The last 
 author calls the slain man Attilius and describes him as " praeco Opimii consults ". 
 Cf. Ihne Rom, Gesch. v. p. 103. 
 
250 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 121 
 
 disclaimed the hasty action of his followers might be interpreted as 
 a renewed infringement of law. He had hurried from the Capitol 
 to the Forum to explain to all who would listen the unpremeditated 
 nature of the deed and his own innocence of the murder ; but this 
 very action was a grave breach of public law, implying as it did an 
 insult to the majesty of the tribune in summoning away a section 
 of the people whom he was prepared to address.' 
 
 The meeting on the Capitol was soon dissolved by a shower of 
 rain,^ and the tribunes adjourned the business to another day; 
 while Gracchus and Fulvius Flaccus, whose half-formed plans had 
 now been shattered, hastened to their respective homes. The 
 weakness of their position had been that they refused to regard 
 themselves in their true light as the leaders of a revolution against 
 the government. Whatever their own intentions may have been, it 
 is improbable that their suppoiters followed them to the Capitol 
 simply with the design of giving peaceful votes against the measure 
 proposed : and, had Antullius not fallen, the meeting on the Capitol 
 might have been broken up by a rush of Gracchans, as that which 
 Tiberius once harangued had been invaded by a band of senators. 
 Success and even salvation could now be attained solely by the use 
 of force ; and the question of personal safety must have appealed to 
 the rank and file as well as to the leaders, for who could forget the 
 judicial massacre which had succeeded the downfall of Tiberius.' 
 But the security of their own lives was probably not the only 
 motive which led numbers of their adherents to follow the two 
 leaders to their homes.' Loyalty, and the keen activity of party 
 spirit, which stimulates faction into war, must also have led them 
 to make a last attempt to defend their patrons and their cause. 
 The whole city was in a state of restless anticipation of the coming 
 day ; few could sleep, and from midnight the Forum began to be 
 filled with a crowd excited but depressed by the sense of some 
 great impending evil.* 
 
 At daybreak the consul Opimius sent a small force of armed 
 men to the Capitol, evidently for the purpose of preventing the 
 point of vantage being seized by the hostile democrats, and then he 
 issued notices for a meeting of the senate. For the present he re- 
 mained in the temple of Castor and Pollux to watch events. When 
 
 ' [Victor] I.e. Iraprudens contionem a tribuno plebis avocavit. Cf. App. Bell. 
 Civ. i. 25. 
 
 » Plut. C. Graech. 14. ' App. Bell. Civ. i. 25. « App. I.e. 
 
121 B.C.] A STATE OF SIEGE DECLARED 251 
 
 the fathers had obeyed his summons, he crossed the Forum and met 
 them in the Curia. Shortly after their deliberations had begun, a 
 scene, believed to have been carefully prepared, began to be enacted 
 in the Forum. ^ A band of mourners was seen slowly making its 
 way through the crowded market-place ; conspicuous on its bier 
 was the body of Antullius, stripped so that the wound which was 
 the price of his loyalty might be seen by all. The bearers took the 
 route that led them past the senate-house, sobbing as they went 
 and wailing out the mourning cry. The consul was duly startled, 
 and curious senators hastened to the door. The bier was then 
 laid on the ground, and the horrified aristocrats expressed their 
 detestation of the dreadful crime of which it was a witness. Their 
 indignation may have imposed on some members of the crowd ; 
 others were inclined to mock this outburst of oligarchic pathos, 
 and to wonder that the men who had slain Tiberius Gracchus and 
 hurled his body into the Tiber, could find their hearts thus suddenly 
 dissolved at the death of an unfortunate but undistinguished 
 servant. The motive of the threnody was somewhat too obvious, 
 and many minds passed from the memory of Tiberius's death to the 
 thought of the doom which this little drama was meant to presage 
 for his brother. 
 
 The senators returned to the Curia, and the final resolution was 
 taken. Opimius was willing to venture on the step which Scaevola 
 had declined, and a new principle of constitutional law was tenta- 
 tively admitted. A state of siege was declared in the terms that 
 " the consul should see that the State took no harm," ^ and active 
 measures were taken to prepare the force which this decree fore- 
 shadowed. Opimius bade the senators see to their arms, and 
 enjoined each of the members of the equestrian centuries to bring 
 with him two slaves in full equipment at the dawn of the next day." 
 But an attempt was made to avert the immediate use of force by 
 issuing a summons to Gracchus and Flaccus to attend at the senate 
 and defend their conduct there.* The summons was perfectly legal, 
 since the consul had the right to demand the presence of any 
 
 1 Plut. C. Gracch. 14. 
 
 ' Cic. Phil. viii. 4. 14 Quod L. Opimius consul verba fecit de re publica, de ea 
 re ita censuerunt, uti L. Opimius consul rem publicam defenderet. Senatus haec 
 verbis, Opimius armis. Cf. in Cat. i. 2. 4; iv. 5. 10. Plut. C. Gracch. 14 eij rb 
 Pov\evri]ptov aTre\86yTes i^ri<l>l<ravTO Kal Tpoffera^av 'Oiriiilip r^ imdTip adifiv T^fv ttiXiy 
 ivtes SivaiTO Kal KaraXiteiv Tohs Tvpdyyovs. 
 
 ' Plut. l.c. * App. Bell. Civ. i. 26. 
 
252 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 121 
 
 citizen or even any inferior magistrate ; but the two leaders may 
 well be excused for their act of contumacy in disobeying the com- 
 mand. They knew that they would merely be putting themselves 
 as prisoners into the hands of a hostile force ; nor, in the light of 
 past events, was it probable that their surrender and punishment 
 would save their followers from destruction. Preparations for de- 
 fence, or a counter-demonstration which would prove the size and 
 determination of their following, might lead the senate to think of 
 negotiation. Its members had an inducement to take this view. 
 Their legal position, with respect to the step which they were 
 now contemplating, was unsound ; and although they might claim 
 that they had the government in the shape of its chief executive 
 officer on their side, and that their late policy had attracted the 
 support of the majority of the citizens, yet there was no uncon- 
 tested precedent for the legitimacy of waging war against a faction 
 at Rome ; they had no mandate to perform this mission, and its 
 execution, which had lately been rendered illegal by statute law,^ 
 might subsequently be repudiated even by many of those whom 
 they now regarded as their supporters. Yet we cannot wonder at 
 the uncompromising attitude of the senate. They held themselves 
 to be the legitimate government of the State ; they had learnt the 
 lesson that a government must rest either on its merits or on 
 force ; they were unwilling to repeat the scandalous scene which, on 
 the occasion of Tiberius Gracchus's death, had proved their weak- 
 ness, and were perhaps unable to resort to such unpremeditated 
 measures in the face of the larger following of Caius ; they could 
 enlist on their side some members of the upper middle class who 
 would share in the guilt, if guilt there was : and lastly they had at 
 their mercy two men, of whom one had twice shaken the common- 
 wealth and the other had gloried in the prospect of its self- 
 mutilation in the future. 
 
 The wisdom and justice of resistance appealed immediately to 
 the mind of Flaccus, whose combative instincts found their natural 
 satisfaction in the prospect of an interchange of blows. The finer 
 and more complex spirit of Gracchus issued in a more uncertain 
 mood. The bane of the thinker aind the patriot was upon him. 
 Was a man who had led the State to fight against it, and the rule 
 of reason to be exchanged for the base arbitrament of the sword ? 
 
 ' P. 200, 
 
121 B.C.] SEIZURE OF THE AVENTINE 
 
 None knew the emotions with which he turned from the Forum to 
 gaze long and steadfastly at the statue of his father and to move 
 away with a groan ; ^ but the sight of his sorrow roused a sympathy 
 which the call to arms might not have stin-ed. Many of the by- 
 standers were stung from their attitude of indifference to curse 
 themselves for their base abandonment of the man who had sacri- 
 ficed so much, to follow him to his house, and to keep a vigil before 
 his doors. The night was passed in gloomy wakefulness, the spirits 
 of the watchers were filled with apprehension of the common sacri- 
 fice which the coming day might demand, and the silence was only 
 broken when the voluntary guard was at intervals relieved by those 
 who had already slumbered. Meanwhile the neighbours of Flaccus 
 were being startled by the sounds of boisterous revelry that issued 
 from his halls. The host was displaying an almost boyish exuber- 
 ance of spirits, while his congenial comrades yelled and clapped as 
 the wine and the jest went round. At daybreak Fulvius was 
 dragged from his heavy slumbers, and he and his companions armed 
 themselves with the spoils of his consulship, the Gallic weapons that 
 hung as trophies upon his walls.^ They then set out with clamorous 
 threats to take possession of the Aventine. The home that Icilius 
 had won for the Plebs was to be the scene of another struggle for 
 freedom. It was in later times pretended that Fulvius had taken 
 the step, from which even Catilina shrank, of calling the slaves to 
 arms on a promise of freedom.' We have no means of disproving 
 the allegation, which seems to have occurred with suspicious fre- 
 quency in the records left by aristocratic writers of the popular 
 movements which they had assisted to crush. But it is easy to 
 see that the devotion of slaves to their own masters during such 
 struggles, and the finding of their bodies amidst the slain, would 
 be proof enough to a government, anxious to emphasise its merits 
 as a saviour of society, that general appeals had been made to the 
 servile class. Such a deduction might certainly have been drawn 
 from a view of the forces mustered under Opimius ; for in these 
 the slaves may have exceeded the citizens in number.* 
 
 Gracchus's mind was still divided between resistance and resig- 
 nation. He consented to accompany his reckless friend to the 
 Aventine, as the only place of refuge ; but he declined to don his 
 armour, merely fastening under his toga a tiny dagger,^ as a means 
 
 1 Plut. C. Gracch. 14. '^Ibid. 15. ^^ App. Bell. Civ. i. 26. 
 
 * Cf. Bardey Das sechste Consulat des Marius p. 61. " Plut. l.c. 
 
254 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 121 
 
 of defence in the last resort, or perhaps of salvation, did all other 
 measures fail. The presage of his coming doom was shared by his 
 wife Licinia who clung to him at the door, and when he gently dis- 
 engaged himself from her arms, made one more effort to grasp his 
 robe and sank senseless on the threshold. When Gracchus reached 
 the Aventine with his friends, he found that Flaccus and his party 
 had seized the temple of Diana and had made hasty preparations 
 for fortifying it against attack. But Gracchus, impressed with the 
 helplessness or the horror of the situation, persuaded him to make 
 an eifort at accommodation, and the younger son of Flaccus, a boy of 
 singular beauty, was despatched to the Curia on the mission of 
 peace.^ With modest mien and tears streaming from his eyes he 
 gave his message to the consul. Many — perhaps most — of those 
 who listened were not averse to accept a compromise which would 
 relieve the intolerable strain and avert a civil strife. But Opimius 
 was inflexible ; the senate, he said, could not be approached by de- 
 puty ; the principals must descend from the Aventine, lay down 
 their arms, deliver themselves up to justice as citizens subject to 
 the laws, and then they might appeal to the senate's grace; he 
 ended by forbidding the youth to return, if he could not bring with 
 him an acceptance of these final terms. The more pacific members 
 of the senate could offer no effective objection, for it was clear that 
 the consul was acting within his legal rights. The coercion of a 
 disobedient citizen was a matter for the executive power and, though 
 Opimius had spoken in the name of the senate, the authority and 
 the responsibility were his. Retirement would have been their 
 only mode of protest ; but this would have been a violation of the 
 discipline which bound the Council to its head, and would have 
 betrayed a suspicious indifference to the cause which was regarded 
 as that of the constitution. It is said that, on the return of the 
 messenger, Gracchus expressed willingness to accept the consul's 
 terms and was prepared to enter the senate and there plead his own 
 cause and that of his followers.^ But none of his comrades would 
 agree, and Flaccus again despatched his son with proposals similar 
 to those which had been rejected. Opimius carried out his injunc- 
 tion by detaining the boy and, thirsting for battle to effect the end 
 which delay would have assured, advanced his armed forces against 
 the position held by Flaccus. He was not wholly dependent on the 
 
 1 Plut. C. Gracch. i6 ; App. l.c. ' » Plut. I.e. 
 
121 B.C.] DEATH OF FLACCUS 256 
 
 improvised levies of the previous day. There were in Rome at that 
 moment some bands of Cretan archers,^ which had either just re- 
 turned from service with the legions or were destined to take part 
 in some immediate campaign. It was to their efforts that the 
 success of the attack was mainly due. The barricade at the temple 
 might have resisted the onslaught of the heavily-armed soldier ; but 
 its defenders were pierced by the arrows, the precinct was strewn 
 with wounded men, and the ranks were in utter disorder when 
 the final assault was made. There were names of distinction which 
 lent a dignity to the massacre that followed. Men like Publius 
 Lentulus, the venerable chief of the senate, gave a perpetual colour 
 of respectability to the action of Opimius by appearing in their 
 panoplies amongst the forces that he led.^ 
 
 When the rout was complete and the whole crowd in full flight, 
 Flaccus sought escape in a workshop owned by a man of his acquain- 
 tance ; but the course of his flight had been observed, the nan-ow 
 court which led to the house was soon crowded by pursuers, who, 
 maddened by their ignorance of the actual tenement that con- 
 cealed the person of Flaccus, vowed that they would burn the whole 
 alley to the ground if his hiding-place were not revealed.^ The 
 trembling artisan who had befriended him did not dare to betray 
 his suppliant, but relieved his scruples by whispering the secret 
 to another. The hiding place was immediately revealed, and the 
 great ex-consul who had laid the foundations of Rome's dominion in 
 farther Gaul, a man strenuous and enlightened, ardent and faith- 
 ful but perhaps not overwise, was hacked to pieces by his own 
 citizens in an obscure corner of the slums of Rome. His elder son 
 fell fighting by his side. To the younger, the fair ambassador of 
 that day, now a prisoner of the consul, the favour was granted of 
 choosing his own mode of death. Early Rome had repudiated the 
 principle of visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children ; * but 
 the cold-blooded horrors of the Oriental and Hellenic world were 
 now becoming accepted maxims of state to a government trembling 
 for its safety and implacable in its revenge. 
 
 Meanwhile Gracchus had been saved from both the stain of 
 civil war and the humiliation of capture by his foes. No man had 
 
 » Plut. l.c. » Cic. in Cat. iv. 6. 13. 
 
 *App. Bell. Civ. i. 26. Plut. (C. Gracch. 16) states that Flaccus fled to a bath- 
 room (elfy Ti ^aKaveiov). 
 * Dionys. viii. 80. 
 
256 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 121 
 
 seen him strike a blow throughout the contest. In sheer disgust at 
 the appalling scene he had withdrawn to the shrine of Diana, and 
 was there prepared to compass his own death.^ His hand was 
 stayed by two faithful friends, Pomponius and Laetorius,^ who urged 
 him to escape. Gracchus obeyed, but it was believed by some that, 
 before he left the temple, he stretched forth his hand to the goddess 
 and prayed that the Roman people might never be quit of slavery 
 as a reward for their ingratitude and treachery.' This outburst of 
 anger, a very natural consequence of his own humiliating plight, is 
 said to have been kindled by the knowledge that the larger portion 
 of the mob had already listened to a promise of amnesty and had 
 joined the forces of Opimius. Unlike most imprecations, that of 
 Gracchus was destined to be fulfilled. 
 
 The flight of Gracchus led him down the slope of the Aventine 
 to the gate called Trigemina which stood near the Tiber's bank. 
 In hastening down the hill he had sprained his ankle, and time for 
 his escape was only gained by the devotion of Pomponius,* who 
 turned, and single-handed kept the pursuing enemy at bay until 
 trampling on his prostrate body they rushed in the direction 
 of the wooden bridge which spanned the river. Here Laetorius 
 imitated the heroism of his comrade. Standing with drawn sword 
 at the head of the bridge, he thrust back all who tried to pass until 
 Gracchus had gained the other bank. Then he too fell, pierced 
 with wounds. The fugitive had now but a single slave to bear him 
 company in his flight ; it led them through frequented streets, 
 where the passers-by stopped on their way, cheered them on as 
 though they were witnessing a contest of speed, but gave no sign 
 of help and turned deaf ears to Gracchus's pleading for a horse ; 
 for the pursuers were close behind, and the dulled and panic-stricken 
 mob had no thought but for themselves. The grove of Furrina ^ 
 received them just before they were overtaken by the pursuing 
 band ; and in the sacred precinct the last act was accomplished. 
 It was known only that master and slave had been found lying side 
 by side. Some believed that the faithful servant had slain Gracchus 
 
 1 Plut. l.c. 
 
 ^ Val. Max. iv. 7. 2 ; [Victor] de Vir. III. 65 ; Oros. v, 12. Plutarch (l.c.) gives 
 the second name as Licinius. 
 
 ' Plut. l.c. *■ [Victor] l.c. 
 
 "Translated " Grove of the Furies " by Plutarch ; cf. Cic. de Nat. Dear. iii. 18. 
 46. The true name of the grove was Lucus Furrinae, named after some goddess, 
 whose significance was forgotten (Varro L. L. vi. 19 Nunc vix nomen notum 
 paucis). See Richter Topographic p. 271. 
 
121 B.C.J DEATH OF GRACCHUS 257 
 
 and then pierced his own breast ; others held that they were both 
 living when the enemy came upon them, but that the slave clung 
 with such frantic devotion to his master that Gracchus's body could 
 not be reached until the living shield had been pierced and torn 
 away.^ The activity of the pursuers had been stimulated by greed, 
 for Opimius had put a price upon the heads of both the leaders of 
 the faction on the Aventine. The bearers of these trophies of 
 victory were to receive their weight in gold. The humble citizens 
 who produced the head of Flaccus are said to have been defrauded 
 of their reward ; but the action of the man who wrested the head 
 of Gracchus from the first possessor of the prize and bore it on a 
 javelin's point to Opimius, long fm-nished a text to the moralist 
 who discoursed on the madness of greed and the thirst of gold. 
 Its unnatural weight is said to have revealed the fact that the 
 brain had been extracted and the cavity filled with molten lead.' 
 The bodies of the slain were for the most part thrown into the 
 Tiber, but one account records that that of Gracchus was handed 
 over to his mother for burial.^ The number of the victims of the 
 siege, the pursuit and the subsequent judicial investigation is said 
 to have been three thousand.* The resistance to authority, which 
 was all that could be alleged against the followers of Gracchus, 
 was treated, not as a riot, but as a rebellion. The Tullianum 
 saw its daily dole of victims, who were strangled by the execu- 
 tioner ; the goods of the condemned were confiscated by the State 
 and sold at public auction. All public signs of mourning were 
 forbidden to their wives ; ' and the opinion of Scaevola, the great- 
 est legal expert of the day, was that some property of his niece 
 Licinia, which had been wrecked in the general tumult, could be 
 recovered only from the goods of her husband, to whom the sedition 
 was due.* The attitude of the government was, in fact, based 
 on the view that the members of the defeated party, whether slain 
 
 ' Plut. C. Gracch. 17. Cf. Val. Max. vi. 8. 3. 
 
 ' Plin. H. N. xxxiii. 3. 48. Cf. Plut. I.e. ; [Victor] l.c. ; Florus ii. 3 (iii. 15). 
 
 ' Oros. V. 12. 
 
 * Oros. l.c. Opimius consul sicut in bello fortis fuit ita in quaestione, crudelis. 
 Nam amplius tria milia hominum suppliciis necavit, ex quibus plurimi ne dicta 
 quidem causa innocentes interfecti sunt. Plutarch (l.c.) gives three thousand as the 
 number actually slain in the tumult. Orosius (I.e.) gives the number slain on the 
 Aventine as two hundred and fifty. For the severity with which Opimius conducted 
 the quaestio see Sail. fug. 16. 2, 31. 7 ; Vellei. ii, 7. 
 
 6 Plut. l.c. 
 
 ' Dig. xxiv. 3. 66. The passage speaks of Licinia's dowry ; yet Plutarch (l.c.) 
 says that this was confiscated. 
 
 17 
 
J58 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 )r executed, had been declared enemies of the State. Their action 
 lad put them outside the pale of law, and the decree of the senate, 
 i^hich had assisted Opimius in the extreme course that he had 
 aken, was an index that the danger, which it vaguely specified, 
 timed at the actual existence of the commonwealth and undermined 
 he very foundations of society. Such was the theory of martial 
 aw which Opimius's bold action gave to his successors. Its weak- 
 less lay in the circumstance that it was unknown to the statutes 
 ,nd to the courts ; its plausibility was due partly to the fact that, 
 ince the desuetude of the dictatorship, no power actually existed 
 Q Rome which could legally employ force to crush even the most 
 iangerous popular rising, and partly to the peculiarities of the 
 novement which witnessed the first exercise of this authority. The 
 illing of Caius Gracchus and his followers, however useless and 
 nischievous the act may have been, had about it an air of spurious 
 egality, with which no ingenuity could invest the murder of 
 Tiberius and his adherents. The fallen chiefs were in enjoyment 
 if no magisterial authority that could justify either their initial 
 ■ction or their subsequent disobedience ; they had fortified a posi- 
 ion in the town, and had certainly taken up arms, presumably for 
 he purpose of inflicting grievous harm on loyal fellow-citizens. As 
 heir opponents were certainly the government, what could they be 
 )ut declared foes who had been caught red-handed in an act of 
 reason so open and so violent that the old identity of " traitors " 
 md " enemies " was alone applicable to their case ? Thus legal 
 heory itself proclaimed the existence of civil war, and handed on to 
 uture generations of party leaders an instrument of massacre and 
 ixtirpation which reached its culminating point in the proscription 
 ist of Sulla. 
 
 Opimius, after he had ceased to preside at his death-dealing 
 lommission, expressed the view that he had removed the rabies of 
 liscord from the State by the foundation of a temple to Harmony. 
 The bitter line which some unseen hand scribbled on the door,' 
 ixpressed the doubt, which must soon have crept over many minds, 
 vhether the doctor had not been madder than the patient, and the 
 'iew, which was soon destined to be widely held, that the authors 
 if the discord which had been professedly healed, the teachers 
 cho were educating Rome up to a higher ideal of civil strife, 
 
 ' In Plutarch's Greek version (C. Gracch. 17) €p7oy airovoias (vecordiae) vahii 
 liovoias (concordiae) toie?. 
 
FUTURE JUDGMENTS ON THE GRACCHI 259 
 
 were the very men who were now in power.^ We shall see in the 
 sequel with what speed Time wrought his political revenge. In 
 the hearts of men the Gracchi were even more speedily avenged. 
 The Roman people often alternated between bursts of passionate 
 sentiment and abject states of cowardly contentment ; but through 
 all these phases of feeling the memory of the two reformers grew 
 and flourished. To accept the Gracchi was an article of faith im- 
 pressed on the proudest noble and the most bigoted optimate by 
 the clamorous crowd which he addressed. The man who aped them 
 might be pronounced an impostor or a traitor ; the men he aped 
 belonged almost to the distant world of the half-divine. Their 
 statues were raised in public places, the sites on which they had 
 met their death were accounted holy ground and were strewn with 
 humble oflferings of the season's fruits. Many even offered to their 
 images a daily sacrifice and sank on their knees before them as 
 before those of the gods.^ The quiet respect or ecstatic reverence 
 with which the names and memories of the Gracchi were treated, was 
 partly due to a vague sense in the mind of the common man that 
 they were the authors of the happier aspects of the system under 
 which he lived, of the brighter gleams which occasionally pierced 
 the clouds of oppression and discomfort ; it was also due to the 
 conviction in the mind of the statesman, often resisted but always 
 recurring, that their work was unalterable. To undo it was to 
 plunge into the dark ages, to attempt to modify it was immediately 
 to see the necessity of its renewal. At every turn in the paths of 
 political life the statesman was confronted by two figures, whom 
 fear or admiration raised to gigantic proportions. The orthodox 
 historian would angrily declare that they were but the figures of 
 two young men, whose intemperate action had thrown Rome into 
 convulsion and who had met their fate, not undeserved however 
 lamentable, the one in a street riot, the other while heading an 
 armed sedition. But the criticism contained the elements of its 
 own refutation. The youth, the brotherhood, the martyrdom of 
 the men were the very elements that gave a softening radiance to 
 the hard contour of their lives. The Gracchi were a stern and ever- 
 present reality ; they were also a bright and gracious memory. In 
 either character they must have lived ; but the combination of both 
 presentments has secured them an immortality which age, wisdom, 
 experience and success have often struggled vainly to secure. 
 
 ' Cf. Neumann Oeschkhte Roms. p. 259. " Plut. C. Gracch. 18. 
 
60 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 That strange feeling which a great and beautiful life has often 
 nspired, that it belongs to eternity rather than to the immediate 
 last, and that it has few points of contact with the prosaic round 
 f present existence, had almost banished from Cornelia's mind the 
 elfish instincts of her loss, and had perhaps even dulled the tender 
 lemories which cluster round the frailer rather than the stronger 
 lements in the characters of those we love. Those who visited 
 ,er in her villa at Misenum, where she kept her intellectual court, 
 urrounded by all that was best in letters, and exchanging greetings 
 r gifts with the potentates of the earth, were amazed at the com- 
 osure with which she spoke of the lives and actions of her sons.^ 
 The memory drew no tear, her voice conveyed no intonation of 
 Drrow or regret. She spoke of them as though they were historical 
 gures of the past, men too distant and too great to arouse the 
 reak emotion which darkens contemplation. Some thought that 
 er mind had been shaken by age, or that her sensibility had been 
 ulled by misfortune. " In this they proved their own utter lack 
 f sensibility " says the loving biographer of the Gracchi : They 
 id not know, he adds, the signs of that nobility of soul, which is 
 Dmetimes given by birth and is always perfected by culture, or the 
 easonable spirit of endurance which mental and moral excellence 
 apply. The calmness of Cornelia proved, as well, that she was at 
 ne with her children after their death, and their identity with a 
 lind so pure is as great a tribute to their motives as the admiration 
 r fear of the Romans is to their intellect and their deeds. Cornelia 
 eserved a memorial in Rome for her own intrinsic worth ; but the 
 emeanour of her latter days justifies the legend engraved on the 
 tatue which was to be seen in the portico of Metellus : " To 
 k>rnelia, the mother of the Gracchi ".^ 
 
 We are now in a position to form some estimate of the political 
 hanges which had swept over Rome during the past twelve years. 
 The revolutionary legislation of this period was, strictly speaking, 
 lot itself the change, but merely the formula which marked an 
 stablished gi-owth ; nor can any profit be derived from drawing a 
 narked contrast between the aims and methods of the two men 
 I'ho were responsible for the most decisive of these reforms. A 
 uperficial view of the facts might lead us to suppose that Tiberius 
 xracchus had bent his energies solely to social amelioration, and 
 
 • Plut. C. Gracch. 19. « Plin. H. N. xxxiv. 6. 31. 
 
THE GRACCHAN REFORMS 261 
 
 that it was reserved for his brother Caius to effect vast changes in 
 the working, though not in the structure, of the constitution. But 
 even a chronological survey of the actions of these two statesmen 
 reveals the vast union of interests that suddenly thrust themselves 
 forward, with a vehemence which demanded either such a resist- 
 ance as no political society is homogeneous enough to maintain, 
 or such concessions as may be graciously made by a government 
 which after the grant may still retain most of the forms and much 
 of the substance of its former power. So closely interwoven were 
 social and political questions, so necessary was it for the attempted 
 satisfaction of one class immediately to create the demand for the 
 recognition or compensation of another, that Tiberius Gracchus had 
 no sooner formulated his agrarian proposals than he was beset with 
 thoughts of legislating for the army, transferring some of the 
 judicial power to the equestrian order, and granting the franchise 
 to the allies.^ Even the belief that these projects were merely a 
 device for securing his own ascendency, does not prove that their 
 announcement was due to a brilliant discovery of their originator, or 
 that he created wants which he thereupon proposed to satisfy. 
 The desperate statesman seizes on the grievance which is nearest to 
 hand ; it is true that he may increase a want by giving the first 
 loud and clear expression to the low and confused murmurings of 
 discontent ; but a grievance that lives and gives violent tokens of 
 its presence, as did that of the Italian allies in the Fregellan revolt, 
 must be real, not fictitious : and when it finds a remedy, as the 
 needs of the poor and the political claims of the knights did under 
 the regime of Caius Gracchus, the presumption is that the disease 
 has been of long standing, and that what it has for a long time 
 lacked was not recognition, but the opportunity and the intelligence 
 necessary to secure redress. Caius Gracchus was as little of a po- 
 litical explorer as his brother ; it did not require the intuition of 
 genius to see facts which formed the normal environment of every 
 prominent politician of the age. His claim to greatness rests, 
 partly on the mental and moral strength which he shared with 
 Tiberius and which gave him the power to counteract the force of 
 inertia and transmute vague thought, first into glowing words and 
 then into vigorous action ; partly on the extraordinary ingenuity 
 with which he balanced the interests and claims of classes so as to 
 
 'P. 134- 
 
\2 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 rm a coalition which was for the time resistless : and partly on 
 le finality with which he removed the jealousies of the hour from 
 le idle arena of daily political strife, and gave them their place in 
 le permanent machinery of the constitution, there to remain as 
 le necessary condition of the precarious peace or the internecine 
 ar which the jarring elements of a balance of power bring in turn 
 I its possessors. 
 Since the reality of the problems with which the Gracchi dealt 
 
 undeniable, and since few would be inclined to admit that the 
 ost efFective treatment of a problem, whether social or political, 
 
 to refuse it a solution, any reasonable criticism of their reforms 
 ust be based solely on a consideration of their aims and methods, 
 he land question, which was taken up by both these legislators, 
 tracts our first attention. The aim of the resumption and 
 distribution of the public domain had been the revival of the 
 ass of peasant holders, whom legend declared, perhaps with a 
 irtain element of truth, to have formed the flower of the civic 
 jpulation during the years when Rome was struggling for a place 
 nongst the surrounding peoples and in the subsequent period of 
 jr expansion over Italy. Such an aim may be looked at from two 
 )ints of view. It may be regarded as an end in itself, without any 
 iference to its political results, or it may be looked on as an effort 
 ) increase the power and security of the State without any peculiar 
 (nsideration of the comfort and well-being of its individual mem- 
 srs. The Gracchan scheme, regarded from the first point of view, 
 m, with respect to its end as distinguished from its methods, be 
 ■iticised unfavourably only by those who hold that an urban life 
 3es under all circumstances convey moral, mental and physical 
 snefits which are denied by the conditions of residence in country 
 istricts. It is true that the objector may in turn point out that 
 le question of the standard of comfort to be attained in either 
 )here is here of supreme importance ; but such an issue brings us at 
 ace within the region of means and not of ends, and an ideal of 
 iiman life cannot be judged solely with reference to the practica- 
 ility of its realisation. It is the second point of view from which 
 le aim of this land legislation may be contemplated, which first 
 ives the critic the opportunity of denying the validity of the end 
 5 well as the efficiency of the means. If the new agricultui'ist was 
 leant to be an element of strength to the Roman State, to save it 
 •om the selfishness of a narrow oligarchy, the instability of a city 
 
THE GRACCHAN REFORMS 263 
 
 mob and the corruption of both, to defend the conquests which the 
 city had won or to push her empire further, it was necessary to prove 
 that he could be of utiHty both as a voting unit and as a soldier in 
 the legions. His capacity for performing the first function efficiently 
 was, at the very least, extremely questionable. The reality of the 
 farmer's vote obviously depended on the closeness of his residence to 
 the capital, since there is not the least trace, at this or at any future 
 time during the history of the Republic, of the formation of any 
 design for modifying the rigidly primary character of the popular 
 assemblies of Rome. The rights of the voter at a distance had 
 always been considered so purely potential, that the inland and 
 northern settlements which Rome established in Italy had generally 
 been endowed with Latin rights, while the colonies of Roman 
 citizens clustered more closely round their mother; and men had 
 always been found ready to sacrifice the active rights of Roman 
 citizenship, on account of the worthlessness of their possession in a 
 remote colony.^ It was even difficult to reconcile the passive rights 
 of Roman citizenship with residence at a distance from the capital ; 
 for all the higher jurisdiction was centred in Rome and could not 
 easily be sought by the inhabitants of distant settlements.^ But, 
 even if we exclude the question of relative distance from the centre 
 of affairs, it was still not probable that the dweller in the country 
 would be a good citizen according to the Hellenic comprehension of 
 that phrase. When Aristotle approves of a country democracy, 
 simply because it is not strictly a democracy at all,* he is thinking, 
 not merely of the farmer's lack of interest in city politics, but of 
 the incompatibility of the perpetual demands which rural pur- 
 suits make on time and energy with attendance on public business 
 at the centre of affairs. The son of the soil soon learns that he 
 owes undivided allegiance to his mother : and he will seldom be 
 stirred by a political emotion strong enough to overcome the 
 practical appeals which are made by seed-time and harvest. But 
 the opportunities for discarding civic obligations were far greater in 
 Rome than in the Greek communities. The Roman assemblies had 
 no stated days of meeting, laws might be promulgated and passed 
 at any period of the year, their tenor was explained at public 
 
 ip. 4. 
 
 2 Hence the establishment of the praefecti jure dicundo, sent to the burgess 
 
 colonies and municipia. 
 
 ' Arist. Pol. iv. 6, p. 1292 b. 
 
64 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 atherings which were often announced on the very morning of the 
 ay for which they were summoned, and could be attended only by 
 bose whom chance or leisure or the habitual pursuit of political 
 xcitement had brought to the Capitol or the Forum. There was 
 ot at this period a fixed date even for the elections of the higher 
 lagistrates. An attempt was perhaps made to arrange them for 
 he summer, when the roads were passable, the labours of spring 
 ere over, and the toils of harvest time had not yet commenced.^ 
 iut the creation of the magistrates with Imperium depended to a 
 irge extent on the convenience of the consuls, one of whom had 
 )metimes to be summoned back from a campaign to preside at the 
 omitia which were to elect his successors ; while even the date of 
 le tribunician elections might have been conditioned by political 
 msiderations. The closing events of the life of Tiberius Gracchus 
 rove how difficult it was to secure the attendance of the country 
 iter even when an election of known political import was in pros- 
 set ; while Caius realised that the best secui'ity for the popular 
 ader, whether as a legislator or a candidate, was to attach the 
 rban resident to himself by the ties of gratitude and interest. 
 fe can scarcely admit, in the face of facts like these, that the agri- 
 ilturist created by the Gracchan reforms was likely to render any 
 gnal political assistance to his city. It is true that the existence 
 ' a practically disfranchised proletariate may have a modifying in- 
 uence on politics. It could not in Rome serve the purpose, which 
 sometimes fulfils in the tnodern world, of moulding the opinion of 
 le voter ; but even in Rome it suggested a reserve that might be 
 rought up on emergencies. A state, however, does not live on 
 nergencies but on the constant and watfhful activity of its mem- 
 3rs. Such activity could be displayed at Rome only by the 
 isured senator or the leaders of the city mob. The forces that had 
 orked for oligarchy in the past might under changed conditions 
 roduce a narrow type of urban democracy ; but they presented no 
 Dpe of the realisation of a true popular government. 
 
 It might be hoped, however, that the newly created farmer 
 light add to the military, if not the political, strength of the 
 bate. The hope, so far as it rested on the agriculturist himself, 
 as rendered something of an anachronism by the present conditions 
 
 ^ The choice of the month of July as the date for elections seems to be post- 
 illan. See Mommsen Staatsr. i. p. 583. During the Jugurthine War consular 
 actions took place, as we shall see, in the late autumn or even in the winter. 
 
THE GRACCHAN REFORMS 266 
 
 of service. Even in the old days a campaign prolonged beyond the 
 ordinary duration of six months had often effected the ruin of the 
 peasant proprietor ; and now that the cautious policy of the pro- 
 tectorate had been so largely abandoned and Rome's military efforts, 
 no longer limited to wars of defence or aggression, were directed 
 to securing her ascendency in distant dependencies by means of 
 permanent garrisons, service in the legions was a still more fatal 
 impediment to industrial development. Rome had not yet learnt 
 the lesson that an empire cannot be garrisoned by an army of con- 
 scripts ; but she was becoming conscious of the inadequacy of her 
 own military system, and this consciousness led her to take the easy 
 but fatal step of throwing far the larger burden of foreign service 
 on the Latins and Italian allies. Any increase in the number and 
 efficiency of her own military forces would thus remove a dangerous 
 grievance, while it added to the strength which, in the last resort, 
 could alone secure the permanence of her supremacy even in Italy. 
 Such an increase was finally effected in the only possible manner 
 — ^by the adoption of a system of voluntary enlistment and by 
 carrying still further the increasing disregard for those antiquated 
 conditions of wealth and status, which were a part of the theory 
 that service was a burden and wholly inconsistent with the new re- 
 quirement that it should become a profession. Although it must 
 be confessed that little assistance in this direction was directly 
 tendered by the Gracchan legislation, yet it should be remembered 
 that, even if we exclude from consideration the small efforts made 
 by Caius to render military service a more attractive calling, the 
 increase of the farmer class might of itself have done much to solve 
 the problem. Although the single occupant of a farm was clearly 
 incapable of taking his part in expeditions beyond the seas without 
 serious injury to his own interests, yet the sons of such a man 
 might have performed a considerable term of military service with- 
 out disastrous consequences to the estate, and where the inherit- 
 ance had remained undivided and several brothers held the land in 
 common, the duties of the soldier and the farmer might have been 
 alternated without leaving the homestead divested of its head. The 
 recognition of the military life as a profession must have profited 
 still more by the policy which encouraged the growth of the country 
 population ; for the energy of the surplus members of the household, 
 whose services were not needed or could not be adequately rewarded 
 on the farm, would find a more salutary outlet in the stirring life 
 
266 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 of the camp than in the enervating influences of the city. The 
 country-side might still continue to supply a better physique and a 
 finer morale than were likely to be discovered in the poorer quarters 
 of Rome. 
 
 The objects aimed at in the Gracchan scheme of land-reform, 
 although in some respects difficult of realisation, have aroused less 
 hostile criticism than the methods which were adopted for their 
 fulfilment. It may be held that the scheme of practical con- 
 fiscation, which, advocated by Tiberius Gracchus, plunged him at 
 once into a fierce political struggle and encountered resistance which 
 could only be overcome by unconstitutional means, might have been 
 avoided had the reformer seen that an economic remedy must be 
 ultimate to be successful, and that an economic tendency can only be 
 resisted by destroying the conditions which give it the false appear- 
 ance of a law. The two conditions which were at the time fatal to 
 the efforts of the moderate holder of land, are generally held to 
 have been the cheapness and, under the inhumane circumstances of 
 its employment, even efficiency of slave labour, and the competition 
 of cheap corn from the provinces. The remedial measures which 
 might immediately present themselves to the mind of a modem 
 economist, who was unfettered by a belief in free trade or in the 
 legitimacy of securing the cheapest labour available, are the pro- 
 hibition of, or restrictions on, the importation of slaves, and the 
 imposition of a duty on foreign corn. The first device might in 
 its extreme form have been impracticable, for it would have been 
 difficult to ensure such a supervision of the slave market as to 
 discriminate between the sale of slaves for agricultural or pastoral 
 work and their acquirement for domestic purposes. A tax on 
 servile labour employed on land, or the moderate regulation which 
 Caesar subsequently enforced that a certain proportion of the herds- 
 men employed on the pasture lands should be of free birth,i would 
 have been more practicable measures, and perhaps, if presented 
 as an alternative to confiscation, might not have encountered an 
 unconquerable resistance from the capitalists, although their very 
 moderation might have won them but a lukewarm support from 
 the people, and ensured the failure that attends on half-measures 
 which do not carry their meaning on their face and lack the bold- 
 ness which excites enthusiasm. But the real objection which the 
 
 ' Suet. Caes. 42. 
 
THE GRACCHAN REFORMS 267 
 
 Gracchi and their circle would have had to legislation of this type, 
 whether it had been suggested to them in its extreme shape or in 
 some modified form, would have been that it could not have secured 
 the object at which they aimed. Such measures would merely have 
 revived the free labourer, while their dream was to re-establish the 
 peasant proprietor, or at least the occupant who held his land on a 
 perfectly secure tenure from the State. And even the revival of 
 the free labourer would only have been exhibited on the most 
 modest scale ; for such legislation would have done nothing to re- 
 claim arable land which had degenerated into pasturage, and to 
 reawaken life in the great deserted tracts, whose solitude was only 
 broken by the rare presence of the herdsman's cabin. To raise a 
 cry for the restoration of free labour on this exiguous scale might 
 have exposed a legislator to the disappointment, if not derision, of 
 his friends and invited the criticism, effective because popular, of 
 all his secret foes. The masters of the world were not likely to 
 give enthusiastic support to a leader who exhibited as their goal 
 the lonely, barren and often dangerous life of sheep-driver to some 
 greedy capitalist, and who offered them the companionship, and not 
 the service, of the slaves that their victorious arms had won. 
 
 The alternative of protective legislation for the defence of Italian 
 grain may be even more summarily dismissed. It was, in the first 
 place, impossible from the point of view of political expediency. 
 The Gracchi, or any other reforming legislators, had to depend for 
 their main support on the voting population of the city of Rome : 
 and such a constituency would never have dreamed for a moment 
 of sanctioning a measure which would have made the price of corn 
 dearer in the Roman market, even if the objections of the capitalists 
 who placed the foreign grain on that market could have been suc- 
 cessfully overcome. So far from dreaming of the practicability of 
 such a scheme, Caius Gracchus had been forced to allow the sale of 
 corn at Rome at a cost below the current market-price. But, even 
 had protection been possible, it must have come as the last, not as 
 the first, of the constructive measures necessary for the settlement 
 of the agrarian question. It might have done something to keep 
 the small farms standing, but these farms had to be created before 
 their maintenance was secured ; and if adopted, apart from some 
 scheme aiming at a redivision of the land, such a protective measure 
 would merely have benefited such existing owners of the large estates 
 as still continued to devote a portion of their domains to agriculture. 
 
268 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 The fact, however, which may be regarded as certain, that 
 foreign corn could undersell that of Italy in the Roman market, 
 and probably in that of all the great towns within easy access of the 
 sea, may seem a fatal flaw in the agrarian projects of the Gracchi. 
 What reason was there for supposing that the tendencies which 
 in the past had favoured the growth of large holdings and replaced 
 agriculture by pasturage, should remain inoperative in the future ? 
 Tiberius Gracchus's own regulation about the inalienability of the 
 lands which he assigned, seemed to reveal the suspicion that the 
 tendencies towards accumulation had not yet been exhausted, and 
 that the occupants of the newly created farms might not find the 
 pursuit of agricufture so profitable as to cling to them in scorn of 
 the enticements of the encroaching capitalist. Doubtless the pro- 
 hibition to sell revealed a weakness in the agricultural system of the 
 times ; but the regulation was probably framed, not in despair of 
 the small holder securing a maintenance, but as a protection against 
 the money-lender, that curse of the peasant-proprietor, who might~ 
 now be less willing to approach the peasant, when the security which 
 he obtained could under no circumstances lead to his acquiring even- 
 tual ownership. With respect to the future, there was reasonable 
 hope that the farmer, if kept in tolerable security from the strategic 
 advances of his wealthier neighbours, would be able to hold his own. 
 In a modem state, possessing a teeming population and a complex 
 industrial organisation, where the profits of a widely spread com- 
 mercial life have raised the standard of comfort and created a host of 
 varied needs, the view may reasonably be taken that, before agri- 
 culture can declare itself successful, it must be able to point to some 
 central market where it will receive an adequate reward for the 
 labour it entails. But this view was by no means so prevalent in 
 the simpler societies of antiquity. The difficulties of communica- 
 tion, which, with reference to transport, must have made Rome 
 seem nearer to Africa than to Umbria, and must have produced a 
 similar tendency to reliance on foreign imports in many of the 
 great coast towns, would alone have been sufficient to weaken the 
 reliance of the farmer on the consumption of his products by the 
 larger cities. The belief that the homestead might be almost self- 
 sufficient probably lingered on in remote country districts even in 
 the days of the Gracchi ; or, if absolute self-existence was unattain- 
 able, the necessities of life, which the home could not produce, 
 might be procured without effort by periodiced visits to the market 
 
THE GRACCHAN REFORMS 269 
 
 or fair, which formed the industrial centre of a group of hamlets. 
 The seemingly ample size of the Gracchan allotments, some of which 
 were three times as great as the larger of the colonial assignments 
 of earlier days,^ pointed to the possibility of the support of a large 
 family, if the simpler needs of life were alone considered. The 
 farmer's soul need not be vexed by competition if he was content 
 to live and not to trade, and it might have been hoped that the 
 devotion to the soil, which ownership inspires, might have worked 
 its magic even on the lands left barren through neglect. There 
 might even be a hope for the cultivator who aimed at the markets 
 of the larger towns ; for, if corn returned no profit, yet 'oil and wine 
 were not yet undersold, and were both of them commodities which 
 would bring better returns than grain to the minute and scrupu- 
 lous care in which the smaller cultivator excels the owner of a great 
 domain. The failure of corn-growing as a productive industry, 
 perhaps the legislation of the Gracchi itself, must have given a 
 great impetus to the cultivation of the vine and the olive, the 
 value attached to which during the closing years of the Republic 
 is, as we have seen, attested by the fact that the extension of 
 these products was prohibited in the Transalpine regions in order 
 to protect the interests of the Roman producer.^ 
 
 An agricultural revival was, therefore, possible ; but its success 
 demanded a spirit that would enter readily into the work, and sub- 
 mit without a murmur to the conditions of life which the stern 
 task enjoined. It was here that the agrarian legislation of the 
 Gracchi found its obstacle. So far as it did fail — so far, that is, 
 as it was not sufficient to prevent the renewed accumulation of the 
 people in the towns and the continued depopulation of the country 
 districts — it failed because it offended against social ideals rather 
 than against economic tendencies. Many of the settlers whom it 
 planted on the allotments, must already have been demoralised by 
 the feverish atmosphere of Rome ; while others of a saner and more 
 vigorous type may have soon looked back on the capital, not as the 
 lounging-place of the idler, but as the exchange of the world, or 
 have turned their thoughts to the provinces as the sphere where 
 energy was best rewarded and capital gave its speediest returns. 
 
 ^ If some of the Gracchan assignments were thhty jugera each (p. 115). The 
 larger assignments of earlier times had been from seven to ten jugera. See Momm- 
 sen in C. I. L. i. pp. 75 foil. 
 
 2 P. 80. 
 
270 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 Of the other social measui-es of this period, colonisation, iff so 
 far as it had a purely agricultural object, is subject to the criteria 
 that have been applied to the agrarian movements of the time ; al- 
 though it is possible that the formation of new or the remodelling 
 of old political societies, which must have followed the scheme of 
 Drusus, had this been ever realised, would have infused a more vig- 
 orous life in agricultural settlements of this type than was likely to 
 be awakened in those which formed a mere outlying part of Rome 
 or some existing municipality. We have seen how the colonial 
 plan of Drusus diiFered in its intention from that of Caius Gracchus ; ^ 
 but the latter statesman had, in the settlement which he projected 
 at Junonia, planned a foundation which would proximately have 
 lived on the wealth of its territory rather than on its trade, and 
 must always have been, like Carthage of old, as much an agricul- 
 tural as a commercial state. To an agrarian project such as this 
 no economic objection could have been offered and, had the scheme 
 of transmarine colonisation been fully carried out, the provinces 
 themselves might have been made to benefit the farming class of 
 Italy, whose economic foes they had become. The distance also 
 of such settlements from Rome would have blunted the craving for 
 the life of the capital, which beset the minds and paralysed the 
 energies of the occupants of Italian land. 
 
 But, on the whole, the Gracchan scheme of colonisation was, as 
 We have seen, commercial rather than agricultural, and was probably 
 intended to benefit a class that was not adapted to rural occupa- 
 tions, either by association or training. By this enterprise Caius 
 Gracchus showed that he saw with perfect clearness the true reason, 
 and the final evidence, of the stagnation of the middle class. A 
 nation which has abandoned agriculture and allows itself to be fed 
 by foreign hands, even by those of its own subjects, is exposed to 
 military dangers which are obvious, and to political perils somewhat 
 more obscure but bearing then* evil fruit from time to time ; but 
 such treason to the soil is no sign of national decay, if the legions 
 of workers have merely transferred their allegiance from the country 
 to the town, from agriculture to manufacture and commerce. In 
 Italy this comforting explanation was impossible. Except perhaps 
 in Latium and Campania, there were few industrial centres ; many 
 of those that existed were in the hands of Greeks, many more had 
 sunk under the stress of war and had never been revived. The 
 
 ' P. 241. 
 
THE GRACCHAN REFORMS 271 
 
 great syndicates in which Roman capital was invested, employed 
 slaves and freedmen as their agents; the operations of these 
 great houses were directed mainly to the provinces, and the Italian 
 seaports were employed merely as channels for a business which was 
 speculative and financial and, so far as Italy was concerned, only 
 to a very slight, if to any, degree productive. To re-establish the 
 producer or the trader of moderate means, was to revive a stable 
 element in the population, whose existence might soften the rugged 
 asperity with which capital confronted power on the one hand and 
 poverty on the other. But to revive it at Rome would have de- 
 manded artificial measures, which, attacking as they must have done 
 the monopolies possessed by the Equites, would have defeated the 
 legislator's immediate object and probably proved impracticable, 
 while such a revival would also have accentuated the centralisation, 
 which might be useful to the politician but was deplored by the 
 social reformer. The debilitated class might, however, recover its 
 elasticity if placed in congenial surroundings and invited to the sites 
 which had once attracted the enterprise of the Greek trader ; and 
 Caius Gracchus's settlements in the south of Italy were means to 
 this end. We have no warrant for pronouncing the experiment an 
 utter failure. Some of these colonies lived on, although in what 
 guise is unknown. But even a_ moderate amount of success would 
 have demanded a continuity in the scheme, which was rudely in- 
 terrupted by the fall of its promoter, and it is not to be imagined 
 that the larger capitalists, whose power the reformer had himself 
 increased, looked with a friendly eye upon these smaller rivals. The 
 scheme of social reform projected by Gracchus found its completion 
 in his law for the sale of corn. When he had made provision for 
 the born agriculturist and the born tradesman, there still remained a 
 residuum of poorer citizens whose inclination and habits prompted 
 them to neither calling. It was for these men that the monthly 
 grant of cheapened grain was intended. Their bread was won by 
 labour, but by a labour so fitful and precarious that it was known to 
 be often insufficient to secure the minimum means of subsistence, 
 unless some help was furnished by the State. The healthier form 
 of state-aid — the employment of labour — was certainly practised by 
 Caius Gracchus, and perhaps the extensive public works which he 
 initiated and supervised, were intended to benefit the artisan who 
 laboured in their construction as well as the trader who would 
 profit by their completion. 
 
272 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 Whatever may be our judgment on the merits and results of 
 this social programme, the importance of the political character 
 which it was to assume, from the close of the career of Caius Grac- 
 chus to the downfall of the Republic, can hardly be exaggerated. 
 The items of reform as embodied in his legislation became the con- 
 stant factors in every democratic programme which was to be issued 
 in the future. In these we see the demand for land, for colonial 
 assignations, for transmarine settlements, for a renewal or extension 
 of the corn law, perpetually recurring. It is true that this recur- 
 rence may be in part due to the very potency of the personality of 
 the first reformer and to the magic of the memory which he left 
 behind him. Party-cries tend to become shibboleths and it is dif- 
 ficult to unravel the web that has been spun by the hand of a master. 
 Even the hated cry for the Italian franchise, which had proved the 
 undoing of Caius Gracchus, became acceptable to party leaders and 
 to an ever-growing section of their followers, largely because it had 
 become entwined with his programme of reform. But the vigorous 
 life of his great manifesto cannot be explained wholly on this 
 ground. It is a greater exaltation of its author to believe that 
 its life was due to its intrinsic utility, and that Gracchus indicated 
 real needs which, because they remained unsatisfied until the birth 
 of the Principate, were ever the occasion for the renewal of proposals 
 so closely modelled on his own. 
 
 When we turn from the social to the political changes of this 
 period, we are on far less debatable ground. Although there may 
 be some doubt as to the intention with which each reform was 
 brought into existence by Caius Gracchus, its character as illus- 
 trated by its place in the economy of the commonwealth is so 
 clearly stamped upon it and so potently manifested in the immedi- 
 ately following years, that a comprehensive discussion of the nature 
 of his single measures would be merely an unprofitable effort to 
 recall the past or anticipate the future. But the collective effect of 
 his separate efforts has been subjected to very different interpreta- 
 tions, and the question has been further complicated by hazardous, 
 and sometimes overconfident, attempts to determine how far the 
 legislator's intentions were fulfilled in the actual result of his reforms. 
 Because it can be shown that the changes introduced bv Gracchus, 
 or, to be more strictly accurate, the symptoms which elicited these 
 changes, ultimately led to monarchical rule, Gracchus has been at 
 times regarded as the conscious author and possessor of a personal 
 
THE GRACCHAN REFORMS 273 
 
 supremacy which he deliberately intended should replace the intri- 
 cate and somewhat cumbrous mechanism which controlled the con- 
 stitutional government of Rome ; because he sowed the seeds of a 
 discord so terrible as to be unendurable even in a state which had 
 never known the absence of faction and conflict, and had preserved 
 its liberties through carefully regulated strife, his work has been 
 held to be that of some avenging angel who came, not to renew, but 
 to destroy. There is truth in both these pictures ; but the Gracchus 
 whom they portray as the force that annihilated centuries of crafty 
 workmanship, as the first precursor of the coming monarchy, is the 
 Gracchus who rightly lives in the historic imagination which, un- 
 fettered by conditions of space or time, prefers the contemplation 
 of the eternity of the work to that of the environment of the 
 worker ; it is a presentment which would be applicable to any 
 man as able and as resolute as Gracchus, who attempted to meet 
 the evils created by a weak and irresponsible administration, partly 
 by the restoration of old forms, partly by the recognition of new 
 and pressing claims. There is a point at which reform, except it 
 go so far as to blot out a constitution and substitute another in its 
 place, must act as a weakening and dissolving force. That point is 
 reached when an existing government is effectually hampered from 
 exercising the prerogatives of sovereignty and no other power is 
 sufficiently i strengthened to act as its unquestioned substitute. The 
 dissolution will be easier if reform bears the not uncommon aspect 
 of conservatism, and a nominal sovereign, whose strength, never very 
 great, has been sapped by disuse and the habit of mechanical obedi- 
 ence, is placed in competition with a somewhat effete usurper. It is 
 not, however, fair to regard Gracchus as a radical reactionary who was 
 the first to drag a prisoned and incapable sovereign into the light of 
 day. Had he done this, he would have been the author of a revolution 
 and the creator of a new constitution. But this he never attempted 
 to be, and such a view of his work rests on the mistaken impression 
 that, at the time of his reforms, the senate was recognised as the 
 true government of Rome. Such a pretension had never been 
 published nor accepted. We are not concerned with its reality 
 as a fact ; but no sound analysis, whether undertaken by lawyer or 
 historian, would have admitted its theoretical truth. The liter- 
 ary atmosphere teemed with theories of popular sovereignty of a 
 limited kind, and Gracchus, while recognising this sovereignty, did 
 little to remove its limitations. It is true that, like his brother, he 
 18 
 
274 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 legislated without seeking the customary sanction of the senate ; 
 but initial reforms could never have been carried through, had the 
 legislator waited for this sanction ; and the future freedom of the 
 Comitia from senatorial control was at best guaranteed by the force 
 of the example of the Gracchi, not by any new legal ordinances which 
 they ordained. Earlier precedents of the same type had not been 
 lacking, and it was only the comprehensiveness of the Gracchan legis- 
 lation which seemed to give a new impetus to the view that in all 
 fundamental matters, which called for regulation by Act of Parlia- 
 ment, the people was the single and uncontrolled sovereign. Thus 
 was developed the idea of the possibility of a new period of growth, 
 which should refashion the details of the structure of the State into 
 greater correspondence with the changed conditions of the times. 
 As the earlier process of change had raised the senate to power, the 
 latter might be interpreted as containing a promise that a new 
 master was to be given to the Roman world. But it is highly im- 
 probable that to Gracchus or to any of his contemporaries was the 
 true nature of the prophecy revealed. For the moment a balance 
 of power was established, and the moneyed class stood midway be- 
 tween the opposing factions of senate and people. Its new powers 
 were intended to constrain the senate into efficiency rather than to 
 reduce it to impotence, and to create these powers Gracchus had 
 endowed the equestrian order with that right of audit which, in the 
 earlier theory of the constitution, had been held to be one of the 
 securest guarantees of the power of the people.^ Gracchus pre- 
 dicted the strife that was likely to follow this friction between the 
 government and the courts ; ^ but this prediction, while it perhaps 
 reveals the hope that in the issues of the future the mercantile class 
 would generally be found on the side of the people, betrays still 
 more clearly the belief that the people, and then- patron of the 
 moment, were utterly incapable of standing alone, and that no true 
 democratic government was possible for Rome. In spite of his 
 Hellenism Gracchus betrayed two characteristics of the true Roman. 
 He believed in the advisability of creating a political impasse, from 
 which some mode of escape would ultimately be devised by the 
 wearied and lacerated combatants ; and he held firmly to the view 
 that the people, considered strictly in itself, had no organic exist- 
 ence; that it never was, and never could be, a power in its own 
 
 'P. 105. »P. 221. 
 
THE GRACCHAN REFORMS 275 
 
 right. He made no effort to give the Roman Comitia an organisa- 
 tion which would have placed it on something like the independent 
 level of a Greek Ecclesia. Such an omission was perhaps the result 
 of neglect rather than of deliberation ; but this very neglect proves 
 that Gracchus had in no way emancipated himself from the typical 
 Roman idea that the people could find expression only through the 
 voice of a magistrate. This idea unquestionably made the leader 
 of the moment the practical head of the State during any crisis that 
 called for constant intervention on the part of the Comitia ; but 
 there is no reason to suppose a belief on the part of Gracchus that 
 such intervention would be unremittingly demanded, would become 
 as integral a part of the every-day mechanism of government as the 
 senate's direction of the provinces or the knight's control of the 
 courts. But even had he held this view, the situation which it 
 conjured up need not have borne a close resemblance to monarchy. 
 The natural vehicle for the expression of the popular will would 
 have been the tribunate — an office which by its very nature pre- 
 sented such obvious hindrances to personal rule as the existence of 
 colleagues armed with the power of veto, the short tenure of office, 
 and the enjoyment of powers that were mainly negative. It is true 
 that the Gracchi themselves had shown how some of these difficul- 
 ties might be overcome. The attempt at re-election, the accumu- 
 lation of offices, the disregard of the veto, were innovations forced 
 on them by the knowledge, gained from bitter experience, that 
 reform could proceed only from a power that was to some extent 
 outside the constitution, and that the efficient execution of the con- 
 templated measures demanded the concentration of varied types of 
 authority in a single hand. Perhaps Caius faced the situation more 
 frankly than his brother ; but his consciousness of the necessity of 
 such an occasional power in the State was accompanied by the 
 belief that it would prove the ruin of the man who grasped it, that 
 the work might be done but that the worker would be doomed. 
 These gloomy anticipations were not the result of disordered nerves, 
 but the natural fruit of the coldly calculating intellect which saw 
 that supremacy either of or through the people was an illusion, 
 that the power of the nobility must be resisted by keener and more 
 durable weapons than the Comitia and its temporary leaders, that 
 the authority of the senate might yield to a slow process of attri- 
 tion, but would never be engulfed by any cataclysmic outburst of 
 popular hostility. It was no part of the statesman's task to pry 
 
276 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 into Ithe future and vex himself with ithe query whether a new 
 and permanent headship of the State might not be created, to play 
 the all-pervading part which destiny had assigned to the senate. 
 The senate's power had not vanished, it was not even vanishing. 
 It was a solid fact, fully accepted by the very masses who were 
 howling against it. Its decadence would be the work of time, and 
 all the great Roman reformers of the past had left much to time 
 and to fortune. The materials with which the Gracchi worked 
 were far too composite to enable them to forecast the shape of the 
 structure of which they were laying the foundations. The essential 
 fact of the future monarchy, the growth of the military power, 
 must have been almost completely hidden from their eyes. It is 
 true that, in relation to the fall of the Republic and the growth of 
 the monarchical idea, the Gracchi were more than mere preparatory 
 or destructive forces. They furnished faint types, which were 
 gladly welcomed by subsequent pretenders, of what a constitutional 
 monarch should be. But it is ever hazardous to identify the 
 destroyer with the creator or the type with the prophet. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE common destiny which had attended the Gracchi was 
 manifested even in the consequences of their fall. At btfth 
 crises a brilliant but disturbing element had vanished, the 
 work of the reformer remained, because it was the utterance of 
 the people before whose sacred name the nobility continued to 
 bow, the political atmosphere was cleared, the legitimate organs 
 of government resumed their acknowledged sway. To speak of a 
 restoration of power to the nobility after the fall of Caius Gracchus 
 is to belie both the facts of history and the impressions of the times. 
 There is little probability that either the nobles or the commons 
 felt that the two years of successful agitation amounted to a change 
 of government, or that the senate ever abandoned the conviction 
 that the reformer, embarrassing as his proceedings might be on 
 account of the obvious necessity for their acceptance, must succumb 
 to the devices which had long formed the stock-in-trade of a success- 
 ful senatorial campaign ; while the transition from the guidance of 
 Gracchus to that of the accredited representatives of the nobility 
 was rendered all the easier by the facts that the authority of the 
 tribune had long been waning, and that, for some months before his 
 death, a large section of the people had been gi'eedily fixing its eyes 
 on an attractive programme which had been presented in the name 
 of the senate. The suppression of the final movement had, it is true, 
 been marked by an unexampled severity ; but these stern measures 
 had followed on an actual appeal to arms, which had elicited a re- 
 sponse from the passive or quaking multitude and had made them 
 in some sense participants in the slaughter. If it was terrible to 
 think that three thousand citizens had been butchered in the streets 
 or in the Tullianum, it was comforting to remember that they had 
 been officially denounced as public enemies by the senate. There 
 was no haunting sense of an inviolable wrong inflicted on the 
 
 (277) 
 
278 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 120 
 
 tribunate, for Caius Gracchus had not been tribune when he fell ; 
 there was no memory, half bitter, half grotesque, of indiscriminate 
 slaughter dealt by a mob of infuriated senators, for this latter and 
 greater imeute had been suppressed by the regular forces of the 
 State, led by its highest magistrate. The position of the govern- 
 ment was more secure, the conscience of the people more easy than 
 it had been after the massacre of Tiberius Gracchus and his 
 followers. This feeling of security on the part of the government, 
 and of acquiescence on that of the people, was soon put to the 
 test by the prosecution of the ex-consul Lucius Opimius. His im- 
 peachment before the people by the tribune Decius^ raised the 
 vital question whether the novel powers which he had exercised 
 in crushing Gracchus and his adherents, could be justified on the 
 ground that they were the necessary, and in fact the only, means of 
 maintaining public security. It was practically a question whether 
 a new form of martial law should be admitted to recognition by 
 the highest organ of the State, the voice of the sovereign people 
 itself; and the discussion was rendered all the more piquant by 
 the fact that that very sovereign was reminded that it had lately 
 sanctioned an ordinance which forbade a capital penalty to be pro- 
 nounced against a Roman citizen except by consent of the people. 
 The arguments used on either side were of the most abstract and 
 far-reaching character.^ In answer to Decius's objection that the 
 proceedings of Opimius were an obvious contravention of statute 
 law, and that the most wanton criminality did not justify death 
 without trial, the view, never ynwelcome to the Roman mind, that 
 there was a higher justice than law, was advanced by the champions 
 of the accused. It was maintained that an ultimate right of self- 
 defence was as necessary to a state as to an individual. The man 
 who attempted to overturn the foundations of society was a public 
 enemy beyond the pale of law ; the man who resisted his efforts by 
 
 ' Liv. Ep. Ix! L. Opimius accusatus apud populum a Q. Decio tribuno plebis 
 quod indemnatos cives in carcerem conjecisset, absolutus est. " In carcerem con- 
 jicere " does not express the whole truth. A magistrate could imprison in prepara- 
 tion for a trial. The words must imply imprisonment preparatory to execution and 
 probably refer to death in the Tullianum. 
 
 => Cic. de Orat. ii. 30. 132 ; Part. Orat. 30. 104. In the latter passage Opimius 
 is supposed to say " Jure feci, salutis omnium et conservandae rei publicae causa." 
 Decius is supposed to answer " Ne sceleratissimum quidem civem sine judicio jure 
 uUo necare potuisti." The cardinal question therefore is " Potueritne recte salutis 
 rei publicae causa civem eversorem civitatis indemnatum necare ? " Cf. Cic. de Orat. 
 ii. 39. 165 Si ex vocabulo, ut Carbo : Sei consul est qui consuluit patriae, quid aliud 
 fecit Opimius ? 
 
120 B.C.] ACQUITTAL OF OPIMIUS 279 
 
 every means that lay to hand was merely fulfilling the duty to his 
 country which was incumbent on a citizen and a magistrate. If 
 this view were accepted, the complex issue at law resolved itself into 
 a simple question of fact. Had the leader and the party that had 
 been crushed shown by their actions that they were overt enemies 
 of the State.? The majority which acquitted Opimius practically 
 decided that Gracchus and his adherents had been rendered outlaws 
 by their deeds. The sentiment of the moment had been cleverly 
 stirred by the nature of the issue which was put before them. Had 
 the voters been Gracchans at heart, they would probably have paid 
 but little attention to these unusual appeals to the fundamental 
 principles of political life, and would have shown themselves sup- 
 porters of the spirit, as well as of the letter, of the enactment whose 
 author they had just pronounced an outlaw. For there could be 
 no question that the Gracchan law, which no one dared assail, was 
 meant to cover just the very acts of which Opimius had been guilty 
 after the slaughter of the Gracchans in the streets had ended. The 
 right to kill in an imewte might be a questionable point ; but the 
 power of establishing a military court for the trial of captured offen- 
 ders was notoriously illegal, and could under very few circumstances 
 have been justified even on the ground of necessity. The decision of 
 the people also seemed to give a kind of recognition to the utterance 
 of the senate which had preceded Opimius's display of force. It is 
 quite true that no successful defence of violence could ever be rested 
 on the formula itself. This " ultimate decree of the senate " was 
 valued as a weighty and emphatic declaration of the existence of a 
 situation which demanded extreme measures, rather than as a legal 
 permit which justified the disregard of the ordinary rights of the 
 citizen. But formulae often have a power far in excess of their 
 true significance ; they impose on the ignorant, and furnish both a 
 shield and a weapon to their cunning framers. The armoury of the 
 senate, or of any revolutionary who had the good fortune to overawe 
 the senate, was materially strengthened by the people's judgment 
 in Opimius's favour.^ The favourable situation was immediately 
 used to effect the recall of Publius Popillius Laenas. His restora- 
 tion was proposed to the people by Lucius Bestia a tribune ; ^ and 
 
 1 Cf. Cic. pro Sest. 67. 140 (Opimium) flagrantera invidia propter interitum C. 
 Gracchi semper ipse populus Romanus periculo liberavit. 
 
 ^ Cic. Brut. 34. 128 L. Bestia ... P. Popillium vi C. Gracchi expulsum sua 
 rogatione restituit. Cf, post Red. in Sen, 15. 38 ; post Red. ad Quir. 4. 10. 
 
280 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 120 
 
 the people which had just sanctioned Opimius's judicial severities, did 
 not betray the inconsistency of continuing to resent the far more 
 restricted persecution of Popillius. Yet the step was an advance 
 on their previous action ; for they were now actually rescinding a 
 legal judgment of their own, and approving of the actions of a court 
 which had been established by the senate on its own authority with- 
 out any previous declaration of the outlawry of its victims — a court 
 whose proceedings were known to have directed the tenor of that 
 law of Caius Gracchus, the validity of which was still unquestioned. 
 But even on the swell of this anti-Gracchan tide the nobility 
 had still to steer its course with caution and circumspection. Per- 
 sonal prejudices were stronger than principles with the masses. 
 They might sanction outrages which already had the blessing of 
 men who represented, externally at least, the more respectable por- 
 tion of Roman society ; but they continued to detest individuals 
 whose characters seemed to have grown blacker rather than cleaner 
 by participation in, or even j ustification of, the recent acts of violence. 
 One of our authorities would have us believe that even the aged 
 Publius Lentulus, once chief of the senate, was sacrificed by his 
 peers to the fate which had attended Scipio Nasica. He had climbed 
 the Aventine with Opimius's troops and had been severely wounded 
 in the ensuing struggle.^ But neither his age nor his wounds suf- 
 ficed to overcome the strange prejudice of the mob. Obloquy and 
 abuse dogged his footsteps, until at length he was forced, in the in- 
 terest of his own peace or security, to beg of the senate one of those 
 honorary embassies which covered the retirement of a senator either 
 for private business or for leisure, and to seek a home in Sicily.'' 
 His last public utterance was an impassioned prayer that he might 
 never return to his ungrateful country : and the gods granted him 
 his request. If this story is true, it proves that public opinion was 
 stronger even than the voice of the Comitia. Lentulus, if put on 
 his trial, would probably have been acquitted; but the resentful 
 minority, which was powerless in the assembly, may have been suf- 
 ficiently strong to make life unbearable to its chosen victim by 
 its demeanour at public gatherings and in the streets. But even 
 the Comitia had limits to its endurance. During the year which 
 
 ' Cic. in Cat. iv. 6. 13 ; Phil. viii. 4. 14. 
 
 " Val. Max. v. 3. 2. The colouring of the story is doubted by Ihne (Rom. Gisck. 
 V. p. III). He thinks that perhaps Lentulus went to Sicily to restore his shattered 
 health. 
 
119 B.C.] PROSECUTION OF CARBO 281 
 
 followed Opimius's acquittal there appeared before them a suppliant 
 for their favour who had about equal claims to the gratitude and 
 the hatred of both sections of the people. They were the self- 
 destructive or corroborative claims of the statesman who is called a 
 convert by his friends and a renegade by his foes. No living man 
 of the age had stood in a stronger political light than Carbo. An 
 active assistant of Tiberius Gracchus, and so embittered an opponent 
 of Scipio AemUianus as to be deemed the author of his death,^ he 
 had severed his connection with the party of reform, probably in 
 consequence of the view that the extension of the franchise which 
 had become embedded in their programme was either impracticable 
 or undesirable. He must have proved a welcome ally to the nobil- 
 ity in their struggle with Caius Gracchus, and their appreciation of 
 his value seems proved by the fact that he was elected to the con- 
 sulship in the very year of the tribune's fall, when the influence of 
 the senate, and therefore in all probability their power of controlling 
 the elections, had been fully re-established. The debt was paid 
 by a vigorous championship of the cause of Opimius, which was 
 heard during the consulship of Carbo.^ The chief magistrate spoke 
 warmly in defence of his accused predecessor in office, and declared 
 that the action of Opimius in succouring his country was an act in- 
 cumbent on the consul as the recognised guardian of the State.^ 
 No man had greater reason to feejl secure than Carbo, who had so 
 lately tested the suffrages of the people as electors and as judges ; 
 yet no man was in greater peril. It seems that, while exposed on 
 the side of his former associates to the impotent rage which is ex- 
 cited by the success of the convert, who is believed to have been 
 rewarded for his treachery, he had not won the confidence, or at 
 least could not arouse the whole-hearted support, of his new asso- 
 ciates and their following in the assembly. Perhaps the landlords 
 had not forgiven the agrarian commissioner, nor the moderates the 
 vehement opponent of Scipio ; to the senate he had served his pur- 
 pose, and they may not have thought him serviceable enough to 
 deserve the effort which had rescued Opimius. Carbo was, in fact, 
 an inviting object of attack for any young political adventurer 
 who wished to inaugurate his career by the overthrow of a distin- 
 guished political victim, and to sound a note of liberalism which 
 should not grate too harshly in the ears of men of moderate views. 
 
 ' P. i6i. ''Cic. de Orat. ii. 25. io6; 39. 165; 40. 170. 
 
 ' Ibid. ii. 39. 165 (quoted p. 278, note 2). 
 
282 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 119 
 
 The assailant was Lucius Crassus,' destined to be the greatest orator 
 of his day, and a youth now burning to test his eloquence in the 
 greatest field afforded by the public life of Rome, but scrupulous 
 enough to take no unfair advantage of the object of his attack." 
 We do not know the nature of the charge on which Carbo was 
 arraigned. It probably came under the expansive conception of 
 treason, and was possibly connected with those very proceedings in 
 consequence of which Opimius had been accused and acquitted.' 
 That the charge was of a character that had reference to recent 
 political events, or at least that the prosecutor felt himself bound 
 to maintain some distinct political principle of a liberal kind, is 
 proved by the regret which Crassus expressed in his maturer years 
 that the impetus of youth had led him to take a step which limited 
 his freedom of action for the future.* Some compunction may also 
 have been stirred by the unexpected consequence of his attack ; for 
 Carbo, perhaps realising the animosity of his j udges and the weakness 
 or coldness of his friends, is said to have put an end to his life by 
 poison.^ Voluntary exile always lay open to the Roman who dared 
 not face the final verdict ; and the suicide of Carbo cannot be held 
 to have been the sole refuge of despair; it is rather a sign of the 
 bitterness greater than that of death, which may fall on the soul 
 of a man who can appeal for sympathy to none, who knows that 
 he has been abandoned and believes that he has been betrayed. 
 The hostility of his countrymen pursued him beyond the grave ; 
 the aristocratic historian could not forget the seditious tribune, and 
 the contemporary chronicles which moulded and handed on the con- 
 ception of Carbo's life, showed the usual incapacity of such writings 
 to appreciate the possibility of that honest mental detachment from 
 a suspected cause which often leads, through growing dissension 
 with past colleagues and increasing co-operation with new, to a 
 more violent advocacy of a new faith than is often shown by its 
 habitual possessors. 
 
 ^ Cic. Brut. 43. 159 Crassus . . . accusavit C. Carbonem, eloquentissimum 
 hominera, admodum adulescens. Cf. de Oral. i. lo. 39. 
 
 ^ Valerius Maximus (vi. 5. 6) tells the story that a slave of Carbo's brought 
 Crassus a letter-case (scrinium) full of compromising papers. Crassus sent back 
 the case still sealed and the slave in chains to Carbo. 
 
 ' Mommsen Hist, of Rome bk. iv. c. 4. 
 
 ■* Cic. in Verr. iii. i. 3 Itaque hoc, judices, ex ... L. Crasso saepe auditum 
 est, cum se nuUius rei tam paenitere diceret quam quod C. Carbonem unquam in 
 judicium vocavisset. 
 
 " Cic. ad Fam. ix. 21. 3 (C. Carbo) accusante L. Crasso cantharidas sumpsisse 
 dicitur. Valerius Maximus (iii. 7. 6) implies that Carbo was sent into exile. But 
 the two stories are not necessarily inconsistent. 
 
POLICY OF THE SENATE 288 
 
 The records of the political contests which occupied the two 
 years succeeding the downfall of Caius Gracchus, are sufficient to 
 prove that political thought was not stifled, that practically any 
 political views — saving perhaps such as expressed active sympathy 
 with the final eflbrts of Caius Gracchus and his friends — might be 
 pronounced, and that the nobility could only maintain its influence 
 by bending its ear to the chatter of the streets and employing 
 its best instruments to mould the opinion of the Forum by a judi- 
 cious mixture of deference and exhortation. The senate knew itself 
 to be as weak as ever in material resources ; government could 
 not be maintained for ever by a series of coups d'etat, and the 
 only method of securing the interests of the rulers was to maintain 
 the confidence of the majority and to presume occasionally on its 
 apathy or blindness. This was the attitude adopted with reference 
 to the proposals which had lately been before the people. Drusus's 
 scheme of colonisation was not withdrawn, but its execution was 
 indefinitely postponed,^ and the same treatment was meted out to 
 the similar proposals of Caius Gracchus. Two of his Italian col- 
 onies, Neptunia near Tarentum and Scylacium, seem actually to 
 have survived ; but this may have been due to the fact that the 
 work of settlement had already commenced on these sites, and that 
 the government did not venture to rescind any measure which had 
 been already put into execution. It was indeed possible to stifle 
 the settlement on the site of Carthage, for here the superstition of 
 the people supported the objections of the senate, and the question 
 of the abrogation of this colony had been raised to such magnitude 
 by the circumstances of Gracchus's fall that to withdraw would have 
 been a sign of weakness. But even this objectionable settlement 
 in Africa gave proof of the scruples of the senate in dealing with 
 an accomplished fact. When the Rubrian law was repealed, it was 
 decided not to take from the coloni the lands which had already 
 been assigned ; no religious pretext could be given for their disturb- 
 ance, for the land of Carthage was not under the ban that doomed 
 the city to desolation ; and the colonists remained in possession of 
 allotments, which were free from tribute, were held as private pro- 
 perty, and furnished one of the earliest examples of a Roman tenure of 
 
 ^Appian {Bell. Civ. i. 35) says that the younger Livius Drusus (91 B.C.) rhv 
 Sfinov . . . imityiTO cnroixlais iroWais es re riiv 'IraAioy Koi 3iKf\lav i\liri<i>t<Tii4vais n^y 
 fK ToWov, yeyovviais Sf oHiru. These colonies could only have been those proposed 
 by his father. 
 
A HISTOBY OF ROME 
 
 land on provincial soil.^ The assignment was by the nature of the 
 case changed from that of the colonial to that of the purely agra- 
 rian type ; the settlers were members of Rome alone and had no 
 local citizenship, although it is probable that some modesb type of 
 urban settlement did grow up outside the ruined walls of Carthage 
 to satisfy the most necessary requirements of the surrounding 
 residents. 
 
 The benefits conferred by the Gracchi on the poorer members 
 of the proletariate were also respected. The corn law may have 
 been left untouched for the time being ^ — a natural concession, for 
 the senate could only hope to rule by its influence with the urban 
 mob, and, in the case of so simple an institution, any modification 
 would have been so patent an infringement of the rights of the re- 
 cipients as to have immediately excited suspicion and anger. With 
 the agrarian law it was diiferent. Its repeal was indeed impos- 
 sible ; but the land-hunger of the dispossessed capitalists might to 
 some extent be appeased by a measure that was not only tolerable, 
 but welcome ; and modifications, so gradual and subtle that their 
 meaning would be unintelligible to the masses, might subsequently 
 be introduced to remedy observed defects, to calm the apprehen- 
 sions of the allies, and perhaps to secure the continuance of large 
 holdings, if economic causes should lead to their revival. The 
 agrarian legislation of the ten years that followed the fall of 
 Caius Gracchus, seems to have been guided by the wishes of the 
 senate ; but much of it does not bear on its surface the signs which 
 we might expect of capitalistic influence or oligarchic neglect of the 
 poor. Large portions of it seem rather to reveal the desire of 
 banishing for ever a harrowing question which was the opportunity 
 of the demagogue ; and the peculiar mixture of prudence, liberality, 
 and selfishness which this legislation reveals, can only be appreci- 
 ated by an examination of its separate stages. 
 
 1 Mommsen in C. I. L. i pp. 75 ff. C/. p. 227. We have no record of the 
 tenure by which Romans held their lands in such settlements as Palma and Pol- 
 lentia (p. 189). They too may have been illustrations of what was known later as 
 the jus Italicum. 
 
 ^ We know that the corn law of C. Gracchus was repealed or modified by a lex 
 Octavia. Cic. Brut, 62. 222 (M. Octavius) tantum auctoritate dicendoque valuit, 
 ut legem Semproniam frumentariam populi frequentis suffragiis abrogaverit. Cf. de 
 Off. ii. 21. 72. But the date of this alteration is unknown and it may not have been 
 immediate. If it was a consequence of Gracchus's fall, as is thought by Peter 
 (Getch. Roms. ii. p. 41), the distributions may have been restored circa iig B.C. 
 (see p. 287). We shall see that in the tribunate of Marius during this year some 
 proposal about corn was before the people (Plut. Mar. 4). 
 
121-119 B.C.] NEW LAND LAWS 285 
 
 Shortly after the death of Caius Gracchus — perhaps in the very 
 year of his fall — a law was passed permitting the alienation of the 
 allotments.^ This measure must have been as welcome to the 
 lately established possessors as it was to the large proprietors ; it 
 removed from the former a galling restraint which, like all such 
 legal prohibitions, formed a sentimental rather than an actual griev- 
 ance, but one that was none the less keenly felt on that account ; 
 while to the latter it offered the opportunity of satisfying those 
 expectations, which the initial struggles of the newly created 
 farmers must in many cases have aroused. The natural conse- 
 quence of the enactment was that the spurious element amongst the 
 peasant-holders, represented by those whose tastes and capacities 
 utterly unfitted them for agriculture, parted with their allotments, 
 which went once more to swell the large domains of their wealthier 
 neighbours.^ We do not know the extent or rapidity of this 
 change, or the stage which it had reached when the government 
 thought fit to introduce a new agrarian law, which may have been 
 two or three years later than the enactment which permitted aliena- 
 tion.' The new measure contained three important provisions.* 
 Firstly, it forbade the further distribution of public land, and thus 
 put an end to the agrarian commission which had never ceased to 
 exist, and had continued to enjoy, if not to exercise, its full powers 
 since the restoration of its judicial functions by Caius Gracchus. 
 We cannot say to what extent the commission was still encounter- 
 ing claims on its jurisdiction and powers of distribution at the time 
 of its disappearance ; but fourteen years is a long term of power for 
 such an extraordinary office, whose work was necessarily one of per- 
 petual unsettlement ; and the disappearance of the triumvirs must 
 have been welcome, not only to the existing Roman occupants of 
 land which still remained public, but to those of the Italians to 
 whom the commission had ever been a source of apprehension. 
 The extinction of the office must have been regarded with indiffer- 
 
 ' App. Bell, Civ. i. 27 v6iu)s re ov iroXii Strrepov iKvpiiSt), riiv 'p\v, irep %s Steipf- 
 povTOf e^^tvai vtirptiffKeiv rots exQvffiv, 
 
 ^ App. /.c. Kal eiiOi/s 01 irXotJo'ioi vapSi rav trevi^tav iojvovvro, fl raitrSe rats Trpotjiti- 
 ff€ffiv ifitd^ovro, 
 
 ' The law permitting alienation may have been in 121 B.C. The year 119 or 
 118 B.C. (ireiiTeKalSeKa /idAiffra ereffiv i,Th ttjs TpdKXOv vo/ioSeirlas) is given by Appian 
 {I.e.) for one of the two subsequent laws which he speaks of. It is probably the 
 date of the first of these, the one which we are now considering. 
 
 * App. I.e. tirSpios ®6pios Sn/ittpxciy iffr/yiiffttTO vS/iov, riiv /liv 7171' /iTjKETi Sicwe/ieii', 
 oAA* elvat Tuv 4x^VTav^ /col ^6povs inrep aiir^s r^ 5i]ficp KCCTaTldecBaii Kal t({5c tci 
 XP^^ra x^P^'" ^^ Siavonds. 
 
286 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 119 
 
 ence by those for whom the commission had ah-eady provided, and 
 by the large mass of the urban proletariate which did not desire 
 this type of provision. The residuum of citizens which still craved 
 land may be conceived to have been small, for eagerness to become 
 an agriculturist would have suggested an earlier claim ; and the 
 passing of the commission was probably viewed with no regret by 
 any large section of the community. The law then proceeded to 
 establish the rights of all the occupants of land in Italy that had 
 once been public and had been dealt with by the commission. To 
 all existing occupants of the land which had been assigned, perfect 
 security of tenure was given, and this security may have been ex- 
 tended now, as it certainly was later, to many of the occupants 
 who still remained on public land which had not been subjected to 
 distribution. So far as the land which had been assigned was con- 
 cerned, this law could have made no specification as to the size of 
 the allotments, for the law permitting alienation had made it prac- 
 tically private property and given its purchaser a perfectly secure 
 title. Hence the accumulations which followed the permit to alien- 
 ate were secured to their existing possessors, and a legal recogni- 
 tion was given to the formation of such large estates as had come 
 into existence during the last three years. But the security of 
 tenure was conditioned by the reimposition of the dues payable to 
 the State, which had been abolished by Drusus. We are not in- 
 formed whether these dues were to be henceforth paid only by 
 those who had received allotments from the land commission, or by 
 all in whose hands such allotments were at the moment to be found ; 
 perhaps the intention was to impose them on all lands that had 
 been public before the tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus ; although 
 many of the larger proprietors, who had recently added to their 
 holdings, might have urged in their defence that they had acquired 
 the land as private property and that it was burdened by no dues 
 at the time of its acquisition. But, even if this burden fell mainly 
 on the class of smaller possessors, it could scarcely be regarded as a 
 grievance, for it had formed part of the Gracchan scheme, and there 
 was no legitimate reason why the newly established class of culti- 
 vators should be placed in a better position than the older occu- 
 pants of the public domain, who still paid dues both on arable land 
 and for the privilege of pasturing their flocks. The temporary 
 motive which had led to their abolition had now ceased to exist, for 
 the agricultural colonies of Drusus, who had promised land free 
 
119 B.C.] NEW LAND LAWS 287 
 
 from all taxes, had not been established, and the chief, almost the 
 sole, example of a recent assignment on such liberal principles was 
 to be discovered in distant Africa. But, even if the cultivators 
 grumbled, their complaints were not dangerous to the government. 
 They would have found no echo at Rome, where the m-ban prole- 
 tariate was content with the easier provision which had been made 
 for its support ; and the new revenues from the public land were 
 made still more acceptable to the eyes of the masses by the pro- 
 vision contained in this agrarian law that they should be employed 
 solely for the benefit of needier citizens. The precise nature of the 
 promised employment is unhappily unknown, our authority merely 
 informing us that "they were to be used for purposes of distribu- 
 tion "} We cannot understand by these words free gifts either in 
 money or corn ; for such extreme measures never entered even into 
 the social ideals of Caius Gracchus, and the senate to its credit 
 never deigned to purchase popularity through the pauperising 
 institutions by which the Caesars maintained the security of their 
 rule in Rome. The words might imply an extension of the system 
 of the sale of cheap com, or a cheapening of the rates at which 
 it was supplied; but the Gracchan system seems hardly to have 
 admitted of extension, so far as the number of recipients was 
 concerned, and cheaper sales would hardly have been encouraged 
 by a government, which, anxious as it was to secure popularity, was 
 responsible for the financial administration of the State and looked 
 with an anxious eye upon the existing drain on the resources of the 
 treasury.^ Perhaps the new revenues were held up to the people as 
 a guarantee that the sale of cheap corn would be continued, and 
 public confidence was increased when it was pointed out that there 
 was a special fund available for the purpose. If we abandon the 
 view that the promised employment of the revenues in the interest 
 of the people referred to the distribution of com, there remains the 
 possibility that it had reference to the acquisition of fresh land for 
 assignation. This promise would indeed have rendered practicable 
 the partial realisation of the shadowy schemes of Drusus, which had 
 never been officially withdrawn ; but it is doubtful whether it would 
 have done much to strengthen the hold of the government upon the 
 urban voter ; for the whole scheme of this new land law seems to 
 
 ' P. 285, note 4. 
 
 ^ If Gracchus's corn law was abolished or modified immediately after his fall 
 (p. 284, note 2), the corn largesses may now have been restored or extended. Cf. p. 306. 
 
288 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. Ill 
 
 prove that the agrarian question was viewed with indifference, and 
 no pressure seems to have been put on the government to carry their 
 earlier promises into effect. 
 
 Apart from the welcome prospect implied in the abolition of 
 the agrarian commission, no positive guarantee against disturbance 
 had yet been given to the Latins and Italians. This was formally 
 granted, in terms unknown to us, at the appropriate hands of 
 Marcus Livius Drusus during his tenure of the consulship.^ The 
 senate, now that it had satisfied the larger proprietors and the 
 urban proletariate, and could boast that it had at least not injured 
 the smaller cultivators, completed its work of pacification by holding 
 out the hand of fellowship to the allies. It was tacitly understood 
 that the new friend was not to ask for more, but he might be 
 induced to look to the senate as his refuge against the rapacity of 
 the mob and the recklessness of its leaders. 
 
 Shortly afterwards the tribune Spurius Thorius ^ carried a law 
 which again abolished the vectigal on the allotments. If we regard 
 this measure as an independent effort on the part of the tribune, it 
 may have been an answer to the protests of the smaller agriculturists 
 still struggling for existence ; if it was dictated by the senate, it 
 may have been due to the absorption of the allotments by the larger 
 proprietors and their unwillingness to pay dues for land which they 
 had added to their private property. But, to whatever party we 
 may assign it, we may see in it also the desire to reach a final 
 settlement of the agrarian question by abolishing all the invidious 
 distinctions between the different tenures of land which had once 
 formed part of the public domain. It removed the injustice of 
 burdening the small holding with a rent which was not exacted 
 from estates that had been partly formed by accretions of such allot- 
 ments ; * and by the abolition of all dues * it tended to remove all 
 land which had been assigned, from the doubful category to which it 
 had hitherto belonged of possessions which, though in a sense private, 
 
 ' Some such guarantee may be inferred from a passage in the lex Agraria 
 (1. 29) Item Latino peregrinoque, quibus M. Livio L. Calpurnio [cos. in eis agris id 
 facere ... ex lege pleb]eive sc(ito) exve foedere licuit. 
 
 ' Cic. Brut. 36. 136 Sp. Thorius satis valuit in populari genere dicendi, is qui 
 agrum publicum vitiosa et inutili lege vectigali levavit. C/. de Oral. ii. 70. 284. 
 Appian, on the other hand, makes Sp. Thorius the author of the law preceding this 
 (p. 285). It is possible that Cicero may be mistaken, but, if he is correct, the 
 fragments of the agrarian law which we possess may be those of the lex Thoria, the 
 name given to it by its earlier editors. For a different view see Mommsen in 
 C. I. L. i. pp. 75 ff. • P. 75. 
 
 * App. Bell Civ, i. 27 toJij pSpout oi iroKh Sffrtpon SteKvre Hinapxos erepos. 
 
Ill B.C.] SETTLEMENT OF THE LAND QUESTION 289 
 
 still recognised the overlordship of the State, and to revive in all 
 its old sharpness the simple distinction between public and private 
 land. This tendency makes it probable that the law of Thorius 
 is identical with one of which we possess considerable fragments ; 
 for this partially preserved enactment is certainly as sweeping a 
 measure as could have been devised by any one eager to see the 
 agrarian question, so far as it affected Italian soil, finally removed 
 from the region of political strife. 
 
 Internal evidence makes it probable that this law was passed 
 in the year 111 b.c.,^ and consequently at the close of that period 
 of comparative quiescence which was immediately followed by the 
 political storm raised by the conduct of the war in Numidia. It 
 may, therefore, be regarded as a product of senatorial enlighten- 
 ment, although its provisions would be quite as consistent with the 
 views of a tolerably sober democrat. The main scope of the enact- 
 ment is to give the character of absolute private ownership, un- 
 burdened by any restrictions such as the payment of dues to the 
 State, to nearly all the land which had been public at the time of 
 the passing of the agrarian law of Tiberius Gracchus. The first 
 provisions refer to lands which had not been dealt with by the 
 agrarian commissioners. Any occupant of the public domain, who 
 has been allowed to preserve his allotment intact, because it does 
 not exceed the limit fixed by the earlier laws, and any one who has 
 received public land from the State in exchange for a freehold which 
 he has surrendered for the foundation of a colony, is henceforth to 
 hold such portions of the public domain as his private property. 
 The same provision holds for all land that has been assigned, 
 whether by colonial or agrarian commissioners. The first class of 
 assignments are those incidental to the one or two colonies of Caius 
 Gracchus, and perhaps of Drusus, that were actually established in 
 Italy. Even at the time of settlement such land must have been 
 made the private property of its holders ; and this law, therefore, 
 
 ' The latest years to which it refers are those of the censors of 115 and the 
 consuls of 113, 112 and in. The harvest and future vintage of iii are referred to 
 (1. 95), and it has, therefore, been assigned to some period between January i and 
 the summer of this year. See jRudorff Das Achergesetz des Sp. Thorius and cf. 
 Mommsen I.e. It is a curious fact, however, that a law dealing with African land 
 amongst others should have been passed in the first year of active hostilities with 
 Jugurtha. From this point of view the date which marks the close of the Jugurthine 
 war, suggested by Kiene {Bundesgenossenkrieg p. 125), i.e., 106 or 105 B.C., is more 
 probable. But the objection to this view is that the law contains no reference to 
 the censors of log. See Mommsen I.e. 
 
 19 
 
290 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. ill 
 
 but confirms the tenure, and implies the validity of the act of colon- 
 isation. Such land is mentioned as having been " given and assigned 
 in accordance with a resolution of the people and the plebs," and all 
 cases in which recent colonial laws had been repealed or dropped — 
 cases which would include Caius Gracchus's threatened partition of 
 the Campanian territory — are tacitly excluded. The second class 
 of assigments refer to those made by the land-commissioners during 
 the whole period of their chequered existence, and the land 
 whose private character is thus confirmed, must have covered 
 much the larger part of what had once been the State's domain in 
 Italy. 
 
 A certain portion of this domain still remains, however, the pro- 
 perty of the State and is not converted into private land. The 
 whole of the soil which had been given in usufruct to colonies and 
 municipal towns, is retained in its existing condition ; the holders, 
 whether Latin colonists or Roman citizens, are confirmed in their 
 possessions ; but, as the land still remains public, they are doubtless 
 expected to continue to pay their quit-rent to the State. Similar 
 provision is made for a peculiar class of land, which had been given 
 by Rome as security for a national debt. The debt had never been 
 liquidated, probably because the creditors preferred the land. This 
 they were now to retain on condition of continued payment of the 
 quit-rent, which marked the fact that the State was still its nominal 
 owner. A public character is also maintained for land which had 
 been assigned for the maintenance of roads.^ Here we find the 
 only instance of an actual assignation of the Gracchan commissioners 
 which was not converted into private property ; the obvious reason 
 for this exception being that these occupants performed a specific 
 and necessary duty, which would disappear if their tenure was con- 
 verted into absolute ownership. Exception against ownership was 
 also made for those commons on which the occupants of surrounding 
 farms had an exclusive right of sending their flocks to pasture ; ^ 
 for the conversion of such grazing land into private lots would have 
 injured the collective interests, and conferred little benefit on the 
 individuals of the group.^ The remaining classes of land which 
 still remain the property of the State, are the roads of Italy, such 
 
 ' See p. 22g. 
 
 ^ Ager compascuus. See Mommsen I.e. and Voigt Vber die staatsrechtlicke 
 possessio und den ager compascuus der rSm. Republik. 
 
 ' The pastores also must often have been too indefinite a body to make it 
 possible to treat them as joint owners. 
 
Ill B.C.] SETTLEMENT OF THE LAND QUESTION 291 
 
 public land as had been specially exempted from distribution by the 
 legislation of the Gracchi, and such as had remained public on other 
 grounds. The only known instance of the first class is the Camp- 
 anian territory, which continued to be let on leases by the State 
 and to bring to the treasury a sure and considerable revenue ; the 
 second class was probably represented by land which was not arable 
 and had for this reason escaped distribution. The law provides 
 that it is not to be occupied but to serve the purposes of grazing- 
 land, and a limit is fixed to the number of cattle and sheep be- 
 longing to a single owner to which it is to afford free pasturage. 
 For the enjoyment of grazing-rights beyond this limit dues are to 
 be paid to the contractors who have purchased the right of collection 
 from the State. 
 
 The law then quits the public domains of Italy for those of 
 Africa and Corinth, partly for the purpose of specifying with exac- 
 titude the rights of the various occupiers and tenants who were 
 settled on the territories, but chiefly with the object of effecting 
 the sale of some of the public domain in the province of Africa and 
 the dependency of Achaea. This intention of alienation is perhaps 
 the chief reason why the great varieties of tenure of the African 
 soil are marshalled before us with such detail and precision ; for it 
 was necessary, in view of the contemplated sale, to re-assert the 
 stability of rights that should be secure by their very nature or had 
 been guaranteed by solemn compact. But the occasion of a com- 
 prehensive settlement of the agrarian question in Italy was no doubt 
 gladly seized as affording the right opportunity for surveying, re- 
 vising, and establishing the claims of those who were in enjoyment 
 of what was, or had been, the provincial domain of Rome across the 
 seas. The rights of Roman citizens and subjects are indifferently 
 considered, and amongst the former those of the settlers who had 
 journeyed to Africa in accordance with the promises of the Rubrian 
 law are fully recognised. The degree of permanence accorded to 
 the manifold kinds of tenure passed in review can not be deter- 
 mined from our text ; but, even when all claims that deserved a 
 permanent recognition had been subtracted, there still remained a 
 residuum of land, leased at quinquennial intervals by the censors, 
 which might be alienated without the infliction of injury on es- 
 tablished rights. We do not know to what extent this sale, the 
 mechanism for which was minutely provided for in the law, was 
 carried in Africa ; its application to the domain land of Corinth 
 
292 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. ill 
 
 was either withdrawn or, if carried out, was but slight or temporary ; 
 for Corinthian land remained to be threatened by later agrarian 
 legislation. It is not easy to suggest a motive for this sale ; for it 
 would seem a short-sighted policy to part, on an extensive scale 
 and therefore presumably at a cheapened rate, with some of the 
 most productive land in the world, such as was the African domain 
 of the period, in order to recoup the treasury for the immediate 
 pecuniary injury which it was suffering in the loss of the revenues 
 from the public land of Italy. Perhaps the government had grown 
 suspicious of the operations of the middle-men, and, since they 
 had restricted their activity by limiting the amount of public land 
 in Italy, deemed a similar policy advisable in relation to some of 
 their foreign dependencies. 
 
 The length at which we have dwelt on this law is proportionate 
 to its importance in the political history of the times, and if we 
 possessed fuller knowledge of its effects, we should doubtless be able 
 to add, in their social history as weU. Its economic results, how- 
 ever, are exceedingly obscure, and possibly it produced none worthy 
 of serious consideration ; for the artificial stability which it may 
 have seemed to give to the existing tenure of land could in no way 
 check the play of economic forces. If these tendencies were still 
 in favour of large holdings,^ the process of accumulation must have 
 continued, and, as we have before remarked, the accumulator was 
 in a securer position when purchasing land which was admittedly 
 the private property of its owner, than when buying allotments 
 which might be held to be still liable to the public dues. On the 
 other hand, the remission of the impost must have relieved, and 
 the sense of private ownership inspired, the labours of the smaller 
 proprietors ; and the perpetuation of a considerable proportion of the 
 Gracchan settlers is probable on general grounds. The reason why 
 it is difficult to give specific reasons for this belief is that, at the 
 time when we next begin to get glimpses of the condition of the 
 Italian peasant class, the great reform had been effected which incor- 
 porated the nations of Italy into Rome. The existence of numerous 
 small proprietors in the Ciceronian period is attested, but many of 
 these may have been citizens recently given to Rome by the Italian 
 
 ^ The tribune L. Marcius Philippus, when introducing an agrarian law in 104 
 B.C., made the startling statement " Non esse in civitate duo milia hominum, qui rem 
 haberent " (Cic. de Off. ii. 21. 73). If there was even a minimum of truth in his words, 
 the expression " qui rem haberent " must mean " moneyed men," " people comfort- 
 ably off". 
 
Ill B.C.] SETTLEMENT OF THE LAND QUESTION 293 
 
 stocks, amongst whom agricultm-e on a small scale had never become 
 extinct.^ 
 
 But the political import of this measure is considerable. By 
 restricting to narrow limits all the land of Italy to which the State 
 could make a claim, it altered the character of agrarian agitation 
 for the future. It did not indeed fulfil its possible object of obvi- 
 ating such measures ; but it rendered the vested interests of all 
 Italian cultivators secure, with the exception of the lessees of the 
 leased domain, who perhaps had no claim to permanence of tenure. 
 This domain was represented chiefly by the Campanian land : and 
 the reformer who would make this territory his prey, injured the 
 finances of the State more than the interests of the individual. If 
 he desired more, he must seek it either in the foreign domains of 
 Rome or by the adoption of some scheme of land purchase. 
 Assignment of lands in particular districts of Italy or in the pro- 
 vinces naturally took the form of colonisation, and this i» the 
 favourite shape assumed by the agrarian schemes of the future. 
 Rome was still to witness many fierce controversies as to the merits 
 of the policy of colonial expansion, and as to the wisdom of employ- 
 ing public property and public revenues to this end ; the rights of 
 the conqueror to the lands of his vanquished fellow-citizens were also 
 to be cruelly asserted, and the civil wars also invited a species of 
 brigandage for the attainment of possession which too often re- 
 placed the judgments of the courts ; but never again do we find a 
 regular political warfare waged between the rich and the poor for the 
 possession of territories to which each of the disputants laid claim. 
 The storm which had burst on the Roman world with the land law 
 of Tiberius Gracchus had now spent its force. It had undoubtedly 
 produced a great change on the face of Italy ; but this was perhaps 
 more striking in appearance than in reality ; neither the work of 
 demolition, nor the opportunities offered for renewal, attained the 
 completeness which they had presented in the reformer's dreams. 
 
 But the peace of the citizen body was not the only blessing be- 
 lieved to be secured by this removal of a temptation to tamper 
 with Italian lands. The anxieties of the Latins and Italians were 
 also quieted, although it may be questioned whether the memory of 
 past wrongs, now rendered irrevocable by the progress of recent 
 agrarian experiments, did not enter into the agitation for the con- 
 
 • P. 78. 
 
294 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. Ill 
 
 ferment of the franchise, which they still continued to sustain. The 
 last great law, following the spirit of the enactment of Drusus 
 which had preceded it by about a year, does indeed show traces of 
 an anxiety to respect Italian claims. Apart from the fact, which we 
 have already mentioned, that all lands which had been granted in 
 usufruct to colonists, were still to be public and were, therefore, 
 in the case of Latin colonies, to be at the disposal of the communi- 
 ties to which they had been granted by treaty, the law contains a 
 special provision for the maintenance of the rights of Latins and 
 Italians, so far as they are in harmony with the rights allowed to 
 Roman citizens by the enactment.^ The guarantees which had 
 been sanctioned by Drusus, were therefore respected ; but their 
 observance was conditioned by the rule that all prohibitions now 
 created for Romans should be extended to the allies. As we do not 
 know the purport of Drusus's measure, or the practices current on 
 the Roman domains occupied by Latins, we cannot say whether 
 this clause produced any derogation of their rights ; but it must 
 have limited the right of free pasturage on the public commons, 
 if they had possessed this in a higher degree than was now per- 
 mitted, and the right to occupy public land was also forbidden 
 them in the future. But it was from the negative point of view that 
 the law might be interpreted as creating or perpetuating a griev- 
 ance ; for some of the positive benefits which it conferred seem to 
 have been limited to Romans. The land which it makes private 
 property, is land which has been assigned by colonial or agrarian 
 commissioners, or land which has been occupied up to a certain 
 limit. If colonial land had really been assigned to Latins by Caius 
 Gracchus, their rights are retained by this law, if they had been 
 made Roman citizens at the time of the settlement ; but if they 
 had been admitted as participants in the agrarian distribution 
 throughout Italy, their rights as owners are not confirmed with 
 those of Roman citizens ; and the Latin who merely occupied 
 land was not given the privilege of the Roman possessor of be- 
 coming the owner of the soil, if his occupation were restricted 
 within a certain limit.^ He still retained merely a precarious pos- 
 session, for which dues to the State were probably exacted. It was 
 
 1 Mommsen in C. I. L. I.e. 
 
 ^ Kiene also thinks (Bundesgenossenkrieg p. 146) that the right given by the law 
 of exchanging a bit of one's own land for an equivalent bit of the public domain, which 
 became private property, was reserved solely for the citizen. 
 
120, 113 B.C.] PROSECUTIONS FOR EXTORTION 295 
 
 something to have rights confirmed, but they probably appeared 
 less valuable when those of others were extended. A more generous 
 treatment could hardly have been expected from a law of Rome 
 dealing with her own domain, primarily in the interests of her own 
 citizens ; but the Italians were tending to forget their civic inde- 
 pendence, and chose rather to compare their personal rights with 
 those of the Roman burgesses. Such a comparison applied to the 
 final agrarian settlement must have done something to emphasise 
 theii' belief in the inferiority of their position. 
 
 This review of the legislation on social questions which was 
 initiated or endured by the senate, shows the tentative attitude 
 adopted by the nobility in their dealings with the people, and 
 proves either a statesmanlike view of the needs of the situation or 
 the entire lack of a proud consciousness of their own immunity from 
 attack. Even had they possessed the power to dictate to the 
 Comitia, they were hemmed in on another side ; for they had not 
 dared to raise a protest against the law of Gracchus which trans- 
 ferred criminal jurisdiction over the members of their own order 
 to the knights. The equestrian courts sat in judgment on the 
 noblest members of the aristocracy ; for the political or personal 
 motives which urged to prosecution were stronger even than the 
 camaraderie of the order, and governors of provinces were still in 
 danger of indictment by their peers. Within two years of the 
 transference of the courts, Quintus Mucins Scaevola, known in later 
 life as " the Augur " and famed for his knowledge of the civil law, 
 returned from his province of Asia to meet the accusation of Titus 
 Albucius.^ The knights did not begin by a vindictive exercise of 
 their authority. Although Asia was the most favoured sphere of 
 their activity, Scaevola was acquitted. Seven years later they 
 gave a stem and perhaps righteous example of their severity in the 
 condemnation of Caius Porcius Cato.^ The accused when consul 
 had obtained Macedonia as his province, and had waged a frontier 
 war with the Scordisci, which ended in the annihilation of his 
 forces and his own narrow escape from the field of battle. His ill- 
 success perhaps deepened the impression made by his extortions in 
 Macedonia, and he was sentenced to the payment of a fine. Neither 
 in the case of the acquittal nor in that of the condemnation does 
 political bias seem to have influenced the judgment of the courts, 
 
 ' Cic. Brut. 26. 102 ; de Orat. ii. 70. 281 ; de Fin. i. 3. 8. 
 " Vellei. ii. 8 ; Cic. in Very. iii. 80. 184 ; iv. lo. 22. 
 
296 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 115 
 
 and the equestrian jurors may have seemed for a time to realise the 
 best hopes which had inspired their creation. 
 
 The attention of the leading members of the nobility was pro- 
 bably too absorbed by the problem of adapting senatorial rule to 
 altered circumstances to allow them the leisure or the inchnation 
 to embark on fresh legislative projects of their own. Our record 
 of these years is so imperfect that it would be rash to conclude 
 that the scanty proposals on new subjects which it reveals ex- 
 hausted the legislative activity of the senate ; but had they done 
 so, the circumstance would be intelligible ; for the work that invited 
 the attention of the senate in its own interest, was one of consolida- 
 tion rather than of reform ; the political feeling of the time put 
 measures of a distinctly reactionary character, such as might have 
 been welcomed by the more conservative members of the order, 
 wholly out of the question ; and the government was not likely, 
 except under compulsion, to undertake legislation of a progressive 
 type. The only important law of the period certainly proceeding 
 from governmental circles, and dealing with a question that was novel, 
 in the sense that it had not been heard of for a considerable number 
 of years and had played no part in the Gracchan movements, was 
 one passed by the consul Marcus Aemilius Scaurus. It dealt with 
 the voting power of the freedmen,' and probably confirmed its re- 
 striction to the four city tribes. It is difficult to assign a political 
 meaning to this law, as we do not know the practice which pre- 
 vailed at the time of Scaurus's intervention ; but it is probable that 
 the restriction imposed by the censors of 169, who had confined 
 the freedmen to a single tribe,^ had not been observed, that great 
 irregularity prevailed in the manner of their registration, and that 
 Scaurus's measure, which was a return to the arrangement reached 
 at the end of the fourth century, was intended to restrict the voting 
 privileges of the class. This interpretation of his intention would 
 seem to show that the increasing liberality of the Roman master 
 had created a class the larger portion of which was not dependent 
 on the wealthier and more conservative section of the citizen body, 
 or was at least enabled to assert its freedom from control through 
 the secrecy of the ballot. The interests of the class were almost 
 identical with those of the free proletariate, in which the des- 
 
 ' [Victor] de Vir. III. 72 Consul legem de sumptibus et libertinorum suffragiis 
 tulit. 
 
 * Liv. xlv. 15. 
 
115 B.C.] CONSULSHIP OF SCAURUS 297 
 
 cendants of the freedmen were merged : and the law of Scaurus, 
 which strengthened the country vote by preventing this urban 
 influence spreading through all the tribes, may be an evidence that 
 the senate distrusted the present passivity of the urban folk, and 
 looked forward with apprehension to a time when they might have 
 to rely on the more stable element which the country districts sup- 
 plied. We shall see in the sequel that this anticipation of the 
 freedmen's attitude was not unjustified, and that the increase of 
 their voting power still continued to be an effective battle-cry 
 for the demagogue who was eager to increase his following in 
 the city. 
 
 Scaurus was also the author of a sumptuary law.^ It came 
 appropriately from a man who had been trained in a school of 
 poverty, and shows the willingness of the nobility to submit, at 
 least in appearance, to the discipline which would present it to the 
 world as a self-sacrificing administration, reaping no selfish reward 
 for its intense labour, and submitting to that equality of life with 
 the average citizen which is the best democratic concession that a 
 powerful oligarchy can make. The activity of the censorship was 
 exhibited in the same direction. Foreign and expensive dishes were 
 prohibited by the guardians of public morals, as they were by 
 Scaurus's sumptuary law : ^ and the censors of 115, Metellus and 
 Domitius, undertook a scrutiny of the stage which resulted in the 
 complete exclusion from Rome of all complex forms of the histrionic 
 art and its reduction to the simple Latin type of music and song.^ 
 Their energy was also displayed in a destructive examination of the 
 morals of their own order, and as a result of the scrutiny thirty- 
 two senators were banished from the Curia.* To guard the senate- 
 house from scandal was indeed the necessary policy of a nobility 
 which knew that its precarious power rested on the opinion of the 
 streets ; and the efforts of the censors, directed like those of their 
 predecessors, to a regeneration which had a national type as its 
 goal, show that that opinion could not yet have been considered 
 wholly cosmopolitan or corrupt. The frequent splendour of tri- 
 
 1 [Victor] I.e. » Plin. H. N. viii. 57. 223. 
 
 ^ Cassiodor. Chron. L. Metellus et Cn. Domitius censores artem ludicram ex 
 urbe removeiunt piaeter Latinum tibicinem cum cantore et ludum talarium. The 
 ludus talarius in its chief form was a game of skill, not of chance. The reference 
 here may be to juggling with the tali on the stage, not to the pursuit of the game in 
 domestic life. 
 
 * Liv. Ep. Ixiii. 
 
298 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 120-115 
 
 umphal processions, such as those which celebrated the victories 
 of Domitius and Fabius over the Allobroges, of Metellus over the 
 Dalmatians, and of Scaurus over the Ligurians,i produced a com- 
 fortable impression of the efficiency of the government in extending 
 or preserving the frontiers of the empire ; the triumph itself was 
 the symbol of success, and few could have cared to question the 
 extent and utiHty of the achievement. Satisfied with the belief 
 that they were witnessing the average type of successful administra- 
 tion, the electors pursued the course, from which they so seldom 
 deflected, of giving their unreserved confidence to the ancient houses; 
 and this epoch witnessed a striking instance of hereditary influence, 
 if not of hereditary talent, when Metellus Macedonicus was borne 
 to his grave by sons, of whom four had held curule office, three had 
 possessed the consulship, and one had fulfilled in addition the lofty 
 functions of the censor and enjoyed the honour of a triumph. ^ 
 
 Yet distinction without a certain degree of fitness was now, as 
 at every other time, an impossibility in Rome. The nobility, al- 
 though it did not love originality, extended a helping hand to the 
 capacity that was willing to support its cause and showed the like- 
 lihood of dignifying its administration ; a career was still open to 
 talent and address, if they were held to be wisely directed ; and the 
 man of the period who best deserves the title of leader of the State, 
 was one who had not even sprung from the second strata of Roman 
 society, but had struggled with a poverty which would have con- 
 demned an ordinary man to devote such leisure as he could spare 
 for politics to swelling the babel of the Forum and the streets. 
 It is true that Marcus Aemilius Scaurus bore a patrician name, 
 and was one of those potential kings who, once in the senate, might 
 assume the royal foot-gear and continue the holy task, which they 
 had performed from the time of Romulus, of guarding and trans- 
 mitting the auspices of the Roman people. But the splendour of 
 the name had long been dimmed. Even in the history of the great 
 wars of the beginning of the century but one Aemilius Scaurus ap- 
 pears, and he holds but a subordinate command as an officer of the 
 Roman fleet. The father of the future chief of the senate had 
 been forced to seek a livelihood in the humble calling of a purveyor 
 of charcoal.^ The son, resolute, ambitious and conscious of great 
 powers, long debated with himself the question of his future walk 
 
 ' Fast, triumph. ; [Victor] de Vir. III. 72. 
 
 '^ Val. Max. vii. i. i. s [Victor] de Vir. III. 72. 
 
163-115 B.C.] CAREER OF SCAURUS 299 
 
 in life." He might remain in the ranks of the business world, 
 supply money to customers in place of coal, and seize the golden 
 opportunities which were being presented by the extension of the 
 banking industry in the provincial world. Had he chosen this 
 path, Scaurus might have been the chief of the knights and the 
 most resolute champion of equestrian claims against the govern- 
 ment. But his course was decided by the afterthought that the 
 power of words was greater than that of gold, and that eloquence 
 might secure, not only wealth, but the influence which wealth alone 
 cannot attain. The fame which he gained in the Forum led inevit- 
 ably to service in the field. He reaped distinction in the Spanish 
 campaigns and served under Orestes in Sardinia. His narrow 
 means rather than his principles may have been the reason why 
 his aedileship was not marked by the generous shows to which the 
 people were accustomed and by which their favour was usually 
 purchased ; in Scaurus's tenure of that office splendour was replaced 
 by a rigorous performance of judicial duties;^ but that such an 
 equivalent could serve his purpose, that it should be even no hin- 
 drance to his career, proves the respect that his strenuous character 
 had won from the people, and the anticipation formed by the 
 government of the value of his future services. Now, when he was 
 nearing his fiftieth year, he had secured the consulship, the bourne 
 of most successful careers, but not to be the last or greatest prize 
 of a man whose stately presence, unbending dignity, and apparent 
 simplicity of purpose, could generally awe the people into respect, 
 and whose keenness of vision and talent for intrigue impressed 
 the senatorial mind with a sense of his power to save, when claims 
 were pressing and difficulties acute. ^ His consulship, though 
 without brilliancy, added to the respectable laurels that he had 
 already attained. A successful raid on some lUyrian tribes * showed 
 at least that he had retained the physical endurance of his youth ; 
 while his legislation on sumptuary matters and the freedman's vote 
 
 1 [Victor] I.e. Ipse primo dubitavit honores peteret an argentariam faceret. 
 
 ^ [Victor] I.e. Aedilis juri reddendo magis quam muneri edendo studuit. 
 
 ' Sallust (^ug. 15) gives the following somewhat unkind sketch of the great 
 senatorial champion, "Aemilius Scauriis, homo nobilis, inpiger, factiosus, avidus 
 potentiae, honoris, divitiarum, ceterum vitia sua callide occultans" "Inpiger, 
 factiosus " are testimonies of his value to his party. The last words of the sketch 
 are a confession that his reputation may have been blemished by suspicion, but 
 never by proof. 
 
 * [Victor] I.e. Consul Ligures et Gantiscos domuit, atque de his triumphavit. 
 Cf. Fast, triumph. 
 
300 A HISTORY OF HOME [B.C. 115 
 
 showed the spirit of a milder Cato, and the moderate conservatism, 
 not distasteful to the Roman of pure blood, which would preserve 
 the preponderance in political power to the citizen untainted by 
 the stain of servitude. A stormy event of his period of office gave 
 the crowd an opportunity of seeing the severity with which a 
 magistrate of the older school could avenge an affront to the dig- 
 nity of his office. Publius Decius, who was beheved to be a conscious 
 imitator of Fulvius Flaccus in the exaggerated vehemence of his 
 oratory, and who had already proved by his prosecution of Opimius 
 that he was ready to defend certain features of the Gracchan cause 
 even when such championship was fraught with danger, was in pos- 
 session of the urban praetorship at the time when Scaurus held the 
 consulship. One day the consul passed the open court of justice 
 when the praetor was giving judgment from the cui-ule chair. 
 Decius remained seated, either in feigned oblivion or in ostentatious 
 disregard of the presence of his superior. The politic wrath of 
 Scaurus was aroused ; an enemy had been delivered into his hands, 
 and the people might be given an object-lessson of the way in which 
 the most vehement champion of popular rights was, even when 
 covered with the dignity of a magistracy, but a straw in the iron 
 grasp of the higher Imperium. The consul ordered Decius to rise, 
 his official robe to be rent, the chair of justice to be shattered in 
 pieces, and published a warning that no future litigant should re- 
 sort to the court of the contumacious praetor.^ The vulgar mind 
 is impressed, when it is not angered, by such scenes of violence. A 
 repute for sternness is the best cloak for the flexibility which, if re- 
 vealed, would excite suspicion. Scaurus to the popular mind was 
 an embodiment of stiffs patrician dignity, perhaps happily devoid of 
 that touch of insolence which is often the mark of a career assured 
 without a struggle ; of a self-complacent dignity, quietly conscious 
 of its own deserts and demanding their due reward, of the calmness 
 of a soul that is above suspicion and refuses to admit even in its in- 
 most sanctuary the thought that its motives can be impugned. 
 Meanwhile certain disrespectful onlookers were expressing wonder 
 at his mysteriously growing wealth and marvelling as to its source. 
 But, marvel as they might, they never drove Scaurus to the neces- 
 sity of an explanation. We shall find him as an old man repelling 
 all attacks by the irresistible appeal to his services and his career. 
 The condemnation of Scaurus appealed to the conservative as a 
 
 • [Victor] l.c. 
 
157-119 B.C.] MARIUS 301 
 
 blow struck at the dignity of the State itself ; to the man of a more 
 open mind it was at least the shattering of a delightful illusion. 
 
 The period which witnessed the crowning of the efforts of the 
 poor and struggling patrician was also sufficiently liberal, or suffi- 
 ciently poor in aristocratic talent, to admit the initial steps in the 
 official career of a genuine son of the people. It was now that 
 Caius Marius was laboriously climbing the grades of curule rank, 
 and showing in the pursuit of political influence at home the 
 rugged determination which had already distinguished him in the 
 field. A Volscian by descent, he belonged to Rome through the 
 accident of birth in the old municipality of Arpinum, which since 
 the early part of the second century had enjoyed full Roman 
 citizenship and therefore gave its citizens the right of suffrage 
 and of honours in the capital. Born of good yeoman stock in the 
 village of Cereatae in the Arpinate territory,^ he had passed a boy- 
 hood which derived no polish from the refinements, and no taint 
 from the corruptions, of city life. In his case there was no puzzling 
 discrepancy between the outer and the inner man. His frame 
 and visage were the true index of a mind, somewhat unhewn and 
 uncouth, but with a massive reserve of strength, a persistence not 
 blindly obstinate, a patience that could wear out the most brilliant 
 efforts of his rivals and opponents. He did not court hostility, 
 but simply shouldered his way sturdily to the front, encouraged by 
 Rome's better spirits, who saw in him the excellent officer with 
 qualities that might make the future general, and appealing to the 
 people, when they gradually became familiar with his presence, as a 
 type of that venerable myth, the rustic statesman of the past. 
 The poverty of his early lot was perhaps exaggerated by historians ^ 
 who wished to point the contrast between his humble origin and 
 his later glory, and to find a suitable cradle for his rugged nature ; 
 even the initial stages of his career afford no evidence of a struggle 
 against pressing want, nor is there any proof that he was supported 
 by the bounty of his powerful friends. Even if he entered the 
 army as a common foot-soldier, he would merely have shared the 
 lot of many a well-to-do yeoman who obeyed the call of the con- 
 scription. With Marius, however, military service was not to be 
 an incident, but a profession. The needs of a widening empire were 
 
 1 Plut. Mar. 3. 
 
 ^In Velleius ii. ii the manuscript reading natus equestri loco (corrected into 
 agyesti) may be correct. 
 
302 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 157-119 
 
 calling for special capacities such as had never been demanded in 
 the past. The career of Scaurus had shown the successful pleader 
 surmounting the obstacle of poverty ; even the higher barrier of 
 birth might be leaped amidst the democratising influences of the 
 camp. The nobility was not sufficiently self-centred to be wholly 
 blind to its own interests ; and it was easier to patronise a soldier 
 than a pleader. In the latter case the aspirant's political creed 
 must be examined ; in the former the last question that would be 
 asked was whether the officer possessed any political creed at all. 
 It might be a question of importance for the future with respect to 
 the candidature for those offices which alone conferred high military 
 command, even though there was as yet no dream of the sword be- 
 coming the arbiter of political life ; but the genuine commander, 
 engaged in the difficult task of remodelling an army, had no eye but 
 for the bearing and qualities of the soldier, and would not scruple to 
 cast aside his patrician prejudices in a despairing effi3rt to find the 
 fittest instruments for the perfecting of his great design. It was 
 Marius's fortunate lot to enter the field at a time of trial, and to 
 serve his first campaign under a general, who was combating the 
 adverse forces of influence, licence and incompetence in the official 
 stafl^ supplied by the government and represented by the young 
 scions of the nobility. To the camp before Numantia, where Scipio 
 was scourging his men into obedience, rooting out the amenities 
 of life, and astonishing his officers with new ideas of the meaning 
 of a campaign, Marius brought the very qualities on which the 
 general had set his heart. An unflinching courage, shown on one 
 i occasion in single combat when he overthrew a champion of the foe, 
 a power of physical endurance which could submit to all changes of 
 temperature and food, a minute precision in the performance of the 
 detailed duties of the camp, soon led to his rapid advancement and 
 to his selection as a member of the intimate circle which surrounded 
 the commander-in-chief. Every great specialist has a small claim 
 to the gift of prophecy ; for he possesses an instinct which reveals 
 more than his reason will permit him to prove ; and we need not 
 wonder at the story that, when once the debate grew warm round 
 Scipio's table as to who would succeed him as the chosen com- 
 mander of the Roman host, he lightly touched the shoulder of 
 Marius and answered " Perhaps we shall find him here '"} 
 
 " Plut. Mar. 3. 
 
119 B.C.] TRIBUNATE OF MARIUS 308 
 
 The higher commands in the army could be sought only 
 through a political career ; and Marius, inspired with the highest 
 hopes by Scipio's commendation, was forced to bi'eathe the uncon- 
 genial atmosphere of the city and to fight his way upwards to the 
 curule offices. There is no proof that he took advantage of the 
 current of democratic feeling which accompanied the movements of 
 the Gracchi. It was, perhaps, as well that he did not ; for such an 
 association might have long delayed his higher political career. 
 The nobles who posed as democrats probably attached more im- 
 portance to forensic skill than to military merit ; and the support 
 which Marius enjoyed was sought and found amongst the represen- 
 tatives of the opposite party. Scipio's death removed a man who 
 might have been a powerful advocate on his behalf; the vague 
 relationship of clientship in which the family of Marius had stood 
 to the clan of the Herennii ^ — a relation common between Roman 
 families and the members of Italian townships, and in this case 
 probably dating from a time before Arpinum had received full 
 Roman rights — seems never to have led to active interference on his 
 behalf on the part of the representatives of that ancient Samnite 
 house. Perhaps the Herennii were too weak to assist the fortunes 
 of their client ; they certainly give no names to the Fasti of this 
 period. It is also possible that the proud soldier was galled by the 
 memory of the hereditary yoke, and sought assistance where it would 
 be given simply as a mark of merit, not as a duty conditioned 
 by the claim to irksome reciprocal obligations. The all-powerful 
 family of the Caecilii Metelli, who were at this time vigorously 
 fulfilling the destiny of office which heaven had prescribed for their 
 clan, stretched out a helping hand to the distinguished soldier ; ^ a 
 family born to military command might consult its interests, while 
 t gratified its sympathies, by attaching to its clientele a warrior 
 who had received the best training of the school of Africanus. 
 After he had held the military tribunate and the quaestorship,^ 
 Marius attained the tribunate of the Plebs with the assistance of 
 Lucius Caecilius Metellus.* u'He was in his thirty-ninth year when 
 he entered on the first office which gave him the opportunity of 
 
 iPlut. Mar. 5. ■^Ibid.^. 
 
 * His military reputation amongst old soldiers had led to his easy attainment of 
 the military tribunate. Sail. yug. 63 Ubi primum tribunatum militarem a populo 
 ' petit, plerisque faciem ejus ignorantibus, facile notus per omnis tribus declaratur. 
 Deinde ab eo magistratu alium post alium sibi peperit. 
 
 ■• Plut. Mar. 4. 
 
304 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 119 
 
 claiming the attention of the people by the initiation of legislative 
 measures. The slowness of his rise may have led him to believe that 
 he might accelerate his career by taking his fortune into his own 
 hands ; certainly if the law which bore his name was not unwelcome 
 to the better portion of the nobility, the methods by which he 
 forced it through did not commend themselves even to his patron. 
 His proposal was meant to limit the exercise of undue influence 
 at the Comitia, and although the law doubtless referred to legislative 
 meetings summoned for every purpose, it was chiefly directed to se- 
 curing the independence of the voter in such public trials as still took 
 place before the people,^ and was perhaps inspired by scenes that 
 might have been witnessed at the acquittal of Opimius one year 
 previously. One of the clauses of the bill provided that the exits to 
 the galleries, through which the voters filed to give their suffrages 
 to the tellers, should be narrowed,^ the object being to exclude the 
 political agents who were accustomed to occupy the sides of the 
 passages, and/ influence or intimidate, by their presence if not by their 
 words, the voting citizen at the critical moment when he was about 
 to record his verdict. Such methods were probably found effective 
 even where the ballot was used, but their success must have 
 been even greater in trials for treason, at which voting by word of 
 mouth was still employed. It was difficult for a government, which 
 had accepted the ballot, to offfer a decent resistance to a measure of 
 this kind. The proposal attacked indifferently political methods 
 which might be, and probably were, employed by both parties ; 
 and, although its success would no doubt inflict more injury on the 
 government than on the opposition, it could not be repudiated by 
 the senate on the ground that it was tainted by an aggressively 
 "popular" character. The opposition which it actually encountered 
 was apparently based on the formal ground that the heads of the 
 administration had not been sufficiently consulted. The law was 
 not the outcome of any senatorial decree, nor had the senate's 
 opinion been deliberately taken on the utility of the measure. 
 The consul Cotta persuaded the house to frame a resolution ex- 
 pressing dissatisfaction with the proposal as it stood, and to sum- 
 mon Marius for an explanation. The summons was promptly 
 
 ^ Plut. I.e. v6iMv Tiya irepl t|'7)(f>o0opfas ypin^ovros mrav SoKovina tuv Svvarav 
 i.^aipe!a-Sai riiv irepl Tits Kplffcis iaxiv. It is possible, however, that Kplirets may 
 simply mean "decisions". 
 
 ' Cic. de Leg. iii. 17. 38 Pontes ... lex Maria fecit angustos. 
 
119 B.C.] TRIBUNATE OF MARIUS 306 
 
 obeyed, but the expected scene of humiliation of the untried 
 parvenu was rudely interrupted at an early period of the debate. 
 Marius knew that he had the people and the tribunician college 
 with him, and that even the most perverse ingenuity could never 
 construe the measure as a factious opposition to the interests of the 
 State. Obedience to the senate would in this instance mean the 
 sacrifice of a reputation for political honesty and courage ; it might 
 be better to burn his boats and to trust for the future to the 
 generosity of the people for the gifts which the nobility so grudg- 
 ingly bestowed. He chose to regard the controversy as one of 
 those cases of hopeless conflict between the members of the magis- 
 tracy, for the solution of which the law had provided regular 
 though exceptional means. He fell back on the majesty of the 
 tribunician power, and threatened Cotta with imprisonment if he 
 did not withdraw his resolution.^ It is probable that' up to this 
 point no decree expressing wholesale condemnation of the bill had 
 been passed, and the senate might therefore be coerced through the 
 magistrate, without its authority being utterly disregarded. Cotta 
 turned to his colleague Metellus, known to be the friend of the 
 obstinate tribune, and Metellus rising gave the consul his support. 
 Mapius, undaunted by the attitude of his patron, hurried matters to a 
 close. He summoned his attendant to the Curia, and bade him take 
 Metellus himself into custody and conduct him to a place of confine- 
 ment. Metellus appealed to the other tribunes, but none would offer 
 his help ; and the senate was forced to save the situation by sacrific- 
 ing its vote of censure. So rapid and complete a victory, even on 
 an issue of no great importance, delighted the popular mind. The 
 senate was then in good favour at Rome ; but a chance for realising 
 their superiority over the greatest of their servants was always wel- 
 come to the people. They also loved those exhibitions of physical 
 force by which the genius of Rome had solved the difficulties of her 
 constitution : and the violence of a tribune was as impressive now as 
 was that of a consul four years later .^ Marius had gained a character 
 for sturdy independence and unshaken constancy, which was to pro- 
 duce unexpected results in the political world of the future, and 
 was to be immediately tested in a manner that must have proved 
 profoundly disappointing to many who acclaimed him. It seems as 
 though this victory over the resolution of the senate may have 
 
 ' Plut. I.e. 61 jttj) Siaypd^eif rh Siy/ia. ^ P. 300. 
 
306 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 117, 1X6 
 
 urged certain would-be reformers to believe that measures of a 
 Gracchan type might win the favour of the people, and secure the 
 support of a tribunician college which seemed to be out of sympathy 
 with the government. Some proposal dealing with the distribution 
 of corn,i perhaps an extension of the existing scheme, was made. 
 It found no more resolute opponent than Marius, and his opposition 
 helped to secure its utter defeat. In this resistance we may per- 
 haps see the genuinely neutral character of the man ; for the attri- 
 bution of interested motives, although the historian's favourite 
 revenge for the difficulties of his task, endows his characters with 
 a foresight which is as abnormal as their lack of principle ; although 
 it is questionable whether Marius would have gained by identifying 
 himself with a cause which had not yet emerged from the ruin of 
 its failure. 
 
 The lack of official support and the alienation of a section of 
 the people may perhaps be traced in the successive defeats of his 
 candidature for the curule and plebeian aedileships,^ although in 
 the elections to these offices the attention of the people was so 
 keenly directed to the candidate's pecuniary means as a guarantee 
 of their gratification by brilliant shows, that the aedileship must 
 have been of all magistracies the most difficult of attainment by 
 merit unsupported by wealth. Even when the rejected candidate 
 had won favour on other grounds, the electors could salve their 
 consciences with the reflection that the aedileship was no obligatory 
 step in an official career, and that, where merit and not money was 
 in question, they could show their appreciation of personal qualities 
 in the elections to the praetorship. A year after his repulse Marius 
 turned to the candidature for this office, which conveyed the first op- 
 portunity of the tenure of an independent military command. He 
 was returned at the bottom of the poll, and even then had to fight 
 hard to retain his place in the praetorian college.^ A charge of un- 
 due influence was brought against the man who had struggled suc- 
 cessfully to preserve the purity of the Comitia, and it was pretended 
 that a slave of one of his closest political associates had been seen 
 within the barriers mixing with the voters. That the charge was 
 supported by powerful influences, or was generally believed to be 
 correct, is perhaps shown by the conduct of the censors of the suc- 
 
 ' Plut. I.e. vijiov . . . ei<r<j>epon4mv irepl (rirov Siavo/ifis. See p. 284. 
 2 Plut. Mar. 5. Cf. Cic. pro Plane. 21. 51 ; Val. Max. vi. 9. 14. 
 ' Val. Max. vi. 9. 14. 
 
115 B.C.] PRAETORSHIP OF MARIUS 307 
 
 ceeding year who expelled this associate from the senate.^ The 
 jurors^ before whom the case was tried — representatives, as we must 
 suppose, of the equestrian order and therefore presumably uninflu- 
 enced by senatorial hostility — were long perplexed by the conflict of 
 evidence. During the first days of the trial it seemed as though 
 the doom of Marius was sealed, and his unexpected acquittal was 
 only secured by the scrutiny of the tablets revealing an equality of 
 votes, a condition which, according to the rules of Roman process, 
 necessitated a favourable verdict. 
 
 His praetorship, in accordance with the rules which now gov- 
 erned this magistracy in consequence of the multiplication of the 
 courts of justice, confined his energies to Rome. We do not know 
 what department of this office he administered ; but, as the charge 
 of no department could make an epoch in the career of any one 
 but a lawyer gifted with original ideas, we are not surprised to 
 find that Marius's tenure of this magistracy, although creditable, 
 did not excite any marked attention.^ After his praetorship he ob- 
 tained his first independent military command in Farther Spain. 
 Such a province had always its little problems of pacification to 
 present to an energetic commander, and Marius's military talents 
 were moderately exercised by the repression of the habitual bri- 
 gandage of its inhabitants.* His tenure of a foreign command may 
 I have added to his wealth, for provincial government could be made 
 to increase the means of the most honest administrator. It was 
 still more important that his tenure of the praetorship had added 
 him to the ranks of the official nobility. His birth was now no 
 bar to any social distinction to which his simple and resolute soul 
 might think it profitable to aspire : and a family of the patrician 
 Julii was not ashamed to give one of its daughters to the adventurer 
 from Arpinum.* Thus Marius remained for a while; to Roman 
 society an interesting specimen of the self-made man, marked by a 
 bluntness and] directness appropriate to the type and provocative 
 of an amused regard ; to the professed politician a man with a fairly 
 successful but puzzling political career, and one that perhaps needed 
 not to be too seriously considered. For to all who understood the 
 
 > Plut. Mar. 3. 
 
 ' SucaiTTaC (Plut. I.e.). It seems, therefore, that a special quaestio dt ambitu 
 existed at this time. Otherwise, the case would naturally have gone before the 
 Comitia. We can hardly think of a Special Commission. 
 
 ' Plut. Mar, 6 iv /ifv oiy ry (rTparriyiif lierpias iiraivovfievoy eavrhi' irope(rx<. 
 
 * Plat. I.e. 'Plut. /.c. 
 
308 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 118 
 
 existent conditions of Roman public life, his attainment of the con- 
 sulship and of a dominant position in the councils of the State must 
 have seemed impossible. There was but one contingency that could 
 make Marius a necessary man. This was war on a grand scale. 
 But the contingency was distant, and, even if it arose, the govern- 
 ment might employ his skill while keeping him in a subordinate 
 position. 
 
 The career of Marius is not the only proof that the tradition 
 of successful opposition to the senate could be easily revived. In 
 the year following his tribunate a new and successful effort was 
 made in the direction of transmarine colonisation.^ The pretext 
 for the measure was the necessity for preserving command of the 
 territory which had been won by the great victories of Domitius 
 and Fabius on the farther side of the Alps ; the strategic value of 
 the foundation was undeniable, and the opposition of the govern- 
 ment was probably directed by the form which it was proposed 
 that the new settlement should take. It was not to be a mere fort 
 in the enemy's country, like the already-established Aquae Sextiae,^ 
 but a true eolonia of Roman citizens,' the creation of which was 
 certain to lead to excessive complications in the foreign policy which 
 dealt with the frontiers of the north. Such a colony would become 
 the centre of an active trade with the surrounding tribes ; though 
 professedly founded in the people's interest, it would rapidly become 
 a mere feeler for extending the operations of the great mercantile 
 class ; the growth of Roman trade-interests would necessarily in- 
 volve a policy of defence and probably of expansion, which would 
 tell heavily on the resources of the State. The success of the 
 government was dependent on the restriction of its efforts, and 
 there is nothing surprising in the hearty opposition which it offered 
 to the projected colony of Narbo Martius. Even after the original 
 measure sanctioning the settlement had passed the Comitia, sena- 
 torial influence led to the promulgation of a new proposal in which 
 the people was asked to reconsider its decision.* But the project 
 
 1 Vellei. ii. 7 Porcio Marcioque consulibus deducta eolonia Narbo Martius. Cf. 
 i. IS. 
 
 ^ This was but a (ppovpa, 'Panaluv (Strabo iv. I. 5). It had been established in 
 122 B.C. 
 
 ' Cic. pro Font. 5. 13 Narbo Martius, eolonia nostrorum eivium, speeula populi 
 Romani ae propugnaeulum istis ipsis nationibus oppositum et objeetum. 
 
 * This fact appears from Cie. pro Cluent. 51. 140 (Crassus) in dissuasione ro- 
 gationis ejus quae contra coloniam Narbonensem ferebatur, quantum potest, de 
 auctoritate senatus detrahit. A rogatio against a project implies something more 
 than opposition to a bill. 
 
118 B.C.] FOUNDATION OF NARBO 309 
 
 had found an ardent champion in the young Lucius Crassus, who 
 strengthened the position which he had won in the previous year, by 
 a speech weighty beyond the promise of his age.^ In his success- 
 ful advocacy of a national undertaking he was not afraid to impugn 
 the authority of the senate, and reaped an immediate reward in 
 being selected, despite his youth, as one of the commissioners for 
 establishing the settlement.^ 
 
 It is probable that without the support of the equestrian order 
 the project for the foundation of Narbo Martins might have fallen 
 through. The man of popular sympathies whose measures attracted 
 their support was tolerably certain of success, and the man who 
 posed as the champion of the order was still more firmly placed. 
 The latter position was occupied for a considerable time by Caius 
 Servilius Glaucia, whose tribunate probably belongs to the close of 
 the period which we are describing.^ Glaucia himself, probably 
 one of those scions of the nobility whom an original bent of mind 
 had alienated from the narrow interests of his order, was a man 
 who, lacking in the gift of passionate but steadfast seriousness which 
 makes the great reformer, possessed powers admirably adapted for 
 holding the popular ear and inspiring his auditors with a kind of 
 robust confidence in himself. Ready, acute and witty,* he possessed 
 the happy faculty of taking the Comitia, under the guise of the 
 plain and honest man, into his confidence. The very ignorance of 
 his auditors became a respectable attribute, when it was figured as 
 ingenuous simplicity which needed protection against the tortuous 
 wiles of the legislator and the official draughtsman. On one occasion 
 Jiie told his audience that the essence of a law was its preamble. If, 
 when read to them, it was found to contain the words " dictator, 
 consul, praetor or magister equitum," the bill was no concern of 
 theirs. But, if they caught the utterance "and whosoever after 
 
 ^ Cic. Brut. 43. 160 Exstat in earn legem senior ut ita dicam quam ilia aetas 
 ferebat oratio. 
 
 *Cic. Brut. I.e. Cf. pro Cluent. 51. 140 (quoted p. 308, note 4) ; de Orat. ii. 
 55. 223 ; Quinctil. Inst. Or. vi. 3. 44. 
 
 ' The date is unknown, but the lex Servilia repetundarum was probably a pro- 
 duct of this tribunate. An approximate date can be assigned to this law, if we 
 believe that it immediately superseded the lex Acilia as the law of extortion, and 
 that the lex Acilia is the lex repetundarum which has come down to us on a bronze 
 tablet (see p. 214); for the latter law must have been abrogated by iii e.g., since 
 the back of the tablet on which it is inscribed is used for the lex agraria of this year 
 (see p. 289). The side containing the lex Acilia must have been turned to the wall, 
 and this fact seems to prove the supersession of this law by a later one on the same 
 subject. See Mommsen in C. I. L. i. p. 56. 
 
 * Peracutus et callidus cum primisque ridiculus (Cic. Brut. 62. 224). 
 
310 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. ill 
 
 this enactmenti" then they must wake up, for some new fetter of 
 law was being forged to bind their limbs.^ A man of this uncon- 
 ventional type was not likely to be popular in the senate, and the 
 opprobrious name, which he subsequently bore in the Curia,^ is a 
 proof of the liveliness which he imparted to debate. 
 
 At the time of Glaucia's tribunate some subtle movement seems 
 to have been on foot for undoing the judiciary law of Caius Grac- 
 chus and ousting the knights from their possession of the court before 
 which senators most frequently appeared. The law which dealt 
 with the crime of extortion by Roman officials had been frequently 
 renewed, and, whenever a proposal was made for recasting the en- 
 actment with a view to effecting improvements in procedure, the 
 equestrian tenure of the court was threatened ; for a new law might 
 state qualifications for the jurors differing from those which had 
 given this department of jurisdiction to the knights. The relief of 
 the order was therefore great when the necessary work of revision 
 was undertaken by one who showed himself an ardent champion of 
 equestrian claims.' Glaucia's alteration in procedure was thorough 
 and permanent. He introduced the system of the "second hear- 
 ing " — an obligatory renewal of the trial, which rendered it possible 
 for counsel to discuss evidence which had been already given, and 
 for jurors to get a grasp of the mass of scattered data which had 
 been presented to their notice — * and he also made it possible to 
 recover damages, not only from the chief malefactor, but from all 
 who had dishonestly shared his spoils.' These principles continued 
 to be observed in trials for extortion to the close of the Republic, 
 and may have been the only permanent relic of Glaucia's feverish 
 political career. But for the moment the clauses of his law which 
 dealt with the qualifications of the jurors, were those most anxiously 
 awaited and most heartily acclaimed. He had stemmed a reaction 
 and consolidated, beyond hope of alteration for a long term of years, 
 the system of dual control established by Caius Gracchus. 
 
 The careers and successes of Marius, Crassus and Glaucia ex- 
 
 1 Cic. pro Rah. Post. 6. 14. 
 
 ^ Stercus Curiae (Cic. de Orat. iii. 41. 164). 
 
 ^ Cic. Brut. 62. 224 Is . . . equestrem ordinem beneficio legis devinxerat. Cf. 
 pro Scauro i. 2. But the law of Glaucia was a lex repetundarum (Ascon. in Scaurian, 
 p. 21 ; Val. Max. viii. i. 8 ; cf. notes 4 and 5), not a lex judiciaria. 
 
 * Cic. in Verr. i. 9. 26. 
 
 " Cic. pro Rab. Post. 4. 8. The granting of the civitas to Latins, as a reward 
 for successful prosecution (Cic. pro Balbo 24. 54), was not an innovation due to 
 Glaucia. It appears already in the lex Acilia. 
 
114 B.C.] RELIGIOUS FEARS 311 
 
 hibit the spirit of unrest which broke at intervals through the 
 apathetic tolerance displayed by the people towards the rule of the 
 nobility. These alternations of confidence and distrust find their 
 counterpart in the religious history of the times ; but a panic spring- 
 ing from a belief in the anger of the gods was even more difficult to 
 control than the alarm excited by the attitude of the government. 
 Such a panic knew no distinctions of station, sex or age ; it seized 
 on citizens who cared nothing for the problems of administration, it 
 was strong in proportion to the weakness of its victims, and gathered 
 from the dark thoughts and wild words of the imbecile the poison 
 which infected the sober mind and assumed, from the very univer- 
 sality of the sickness, the guise of a healthy effort at rooting out 
 some deep-seated pollution from the State. The gloomy record of 
 the religious persecutions of the past made it still more difficult for 
 a government, which prided itself on the retention of the ancient 
 control of morals, which gloried in its monopoly of an historic 
 priesthood that had often set its hand to the work of extirpation, 
 to stifle such a cry. The demand for atonement was the voice of 
 \ the conserver of Rome's moral life, of the patriotic devotee who was 
 j striving earnestly to reclaim the waning favour of her tutelary gods. 
 y If it was further believed that the seat of the corruption was to be 
 / found amidst the families of the nobility itself, the last barrier to 
 resistance had been broken down, for even to seem to shield the un- 
 holy thing was to make its lurking place an object of horror and 
 execration. 
 
 The nerves of the people were first excited by various prodigies 
 
 that had appeared ; a confirmation of their fears might have been 
 
 j found in the utter destruction of the army of Porcius Cato in 
 
 , Thrace ; ^ and a strange calamity soon gave an index to the nature 
 
 \ of the offence which excited the anger of the gods. When Helvius, 
 
 a Roman knight, was. journeying with his wife and daughter from 
 
 / Rome to Apulia, they were enveloped in a sudden storm. The 
 
 alarm of the girl urged the father to seek shelter with all speed. 
 
 The horses were loosed from the vehicle, the maiden was placed on 
 
 one, and the party was hastening along the road, when suddenly 
 
 there was a blinding flash and, when it had passed, the young 
 
 Helvia and her horse were seen prone upon the ground. The force 
 
 of the lightning had stripped every garment and ornament from her 
 
 ' Liv. Ef. Ixiii. ; Florus i. 39 (iii. 4) ; Eutrop. iv. 24. 
 
312 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 114 
 
 body, and the dead steed lay a few paces oflF with its trappings riven 
 and scattered around it.^ Death by a thunderbolt had always a 
 meaning, which was sometimes hard to find ; but here the gods had 
 not left the inquiring votary utterly in doubt. The nakedness of 
 the stricken maiden was a riddle that the priests could read. It 
 was a manifest sign that a virginal vow had been broken, and that 
 some of the keepers of the eternal fire were tainted with the sin of 
 unchastity. The destruction of the horse seemed to portend that a 
 knight would be found to be a partner in the crime.^ Evidence 
 was invited and was soon forthcoming. The slave of a certain 
 Barrus came forward and deposed to the corruption of three of the 
 vestal virgins, Aemilia, Licinia and Marcia.^ He pretended that 
 the incestuous intercourse had been of long standing, and he named 
 his own master amongst many other men whom he declared to be 
 the authors of the sacrilege. The maidens were believed to have 
 added to their lovers to screen their first oflence ; the sacrifice of 
 their honour became the price of silence ; and their first corrupters 
 were forced to be dumb when jealousy was mastered by fear. The 
 knowledge of the crime is believed to have been widely spread 
 amongst the circles of the better class, until the conspiracy of silence 
 was broken down by the action of a slave,* and all who would not 
 be deemed accomplices were forced to add their share to the weight 
 of the accusing testimony. 
 
 A scandal of this magnitude called for a formal trial by the 
 supreme religious tribunal, and towards the close of the year^ 
 Lucius Metellus, the chief pontifi^, summoned the incriminated 
 vestals before the college. Aemilia was condemned, but Licinia 
 and Marcia were acquitted. There was an immediate outcry ; the 
 pontifi's leniency was severely censured ; and the anger and fear of 
 the people emboldened a tribune, Sextus Peducaeus, to propose for 
 the first time that the secular arm should wrest from the pontifical 
 college the spiritual jurisdiction that it had abused. He carried a 
 resolution that a special commission should be estabhshed by the 
 people to continue the investigation.^ The judges were probably 
 Roman knights after the model of the Gracchan jurors; the pre- 
 
 ' Oros. V. 15. 2 Plut. Quaest. Rom. 83. 
 
 ' Plut. Quaest. Rom. 83. The manuscript reading is $apPipov rivhs tmriKov 
 eepAToy. I have adopted Ihne's suggestion of Bdppov, which he supports by a re- 
 ference to Porphyrio ad Hor. Sat. i. 6. 30— Hie Barrus vilisimmae libidinosaeque 
 admodum vitae fuit, adeo ut Aemiliam virginem Vestae incestasse dictus sit. 
 
 * Dio Cass./r. 92. 6 Macrob. Sat. i. lo. 5. 
 
 " Ascon. in Milonian. p. 46. Cf. Cic. de Nat. Dear. iii. 30. 74, 
 
113 B.C.] TRIAL OF THE VESTALS 313 
 
 sident was the terrible Lucius Cassius Longinus, already known for 
 his severity as a censor and famed for his penetration as a criminal 
 judge. This fatal penetration, which had endowed his tribunal 
 with the nickname " the reef of the accused," ^ was now welcomed 
 as a surety that the inquiry would be searching, and that the inno- 
 cence which survived it would be so well established that all doubt 
 and fear would be dissolved. This commission condemned, not only 
 the two vestals whom the pontiffs had acquitted, but many of their 
 female intermediaries as well.^ Some of their supposed paramours 
 must also have been convicted ; amongst the accused was Marcus 
 Antonius, who was in future days to share the realm of oratory 
 with Lucius Crassus. He was on the eve of his departure to Asia, 
 where he was to exercise the duties of a quaestor, when he was sum- 
 moned to appear before the court over which Cassius presided. He 
 might have pleaded the benefit of his obligation to continue his 
 official duties ; ' but he preferred to waive his claim and face his 
 judges. His escape was believed to have been mainly due to the 
 heroic conduct of a young slave, who, presented of his own free will 
 to the torture, bore the anguish of the rack, the scourge and the 
 fire without uttering a word that might incriminate his master.* 
 The free employment of such methods in trials for incest throws a 
 grave doubt on the value of the judgment which they elicited ; and, 
 when a court is established for the purpose of appeasing the popular 
 conscience, a part at least of its conduct may be easily suspected of 
 being preordained. Cassius's rigour in this matter was thought ex- 
 cessive ; ^ but, even had he and the jurors meted out nothing but the 
 strictest justice, the memory of their sentence would long have 
 rankled in the minds of the influential families whose members they 
 had condemned, and thus perpetuated the tradition of their unneces- 
 sary severity. It may be doubted, however, whether a secular court 
 was competent to inflict the horrible penalties of pontifical jurisdic- 
 tion, to condemn the vestal to a living grave and her paramour to 
 death by the scourge ; * interdiction, and perhaps in the more serious 
 cases the death by strangling usually reserved for traitors, may 
 have been meted out to the men, while the women may have been 
 
 ' Scopulus reorum (Val. Max. iii. 7. g). ^ Ascon. I.e. 
 
 ' Val. Max. I.e. Cum id vitare beneficio legis Memmiae liceret, quae eorum, qui 
 rei publicae causa abessent, recipi nomina vetabat. 
 * Val. Max. vi. 8. i. 
 
 ' Ascon. I.e. Nimia etiam, ut existimatio est, asperitate usus. 
 'Zumpt Criminalrecht i. p. 117. 
 
314 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. Ill 
 
 handed over to their relatives for execution. But even this ex- 
 emplary visitation of the vices which lurked in the heart of the 
 State was not deemed sufficient to appease the gods or to quiet the 
 popular conscience. To punish the guilty was to oiFer the barest 
 satisfaction to heaven and to conscience ; a fuller atonement was 
 demanded, and the Sibylline oracles, when consulted on the point, 
 were understood to ordain the cultivation of certain strange divin- 
 ities by the living sacrifice of four strangers, two of Hellenic and 
 two of Gallic race.^ The accomplishment of this act must have 
 been a severe strain on the reason and conscience of a government 
 which sixteen years later absolutely prohibited the performance of 
 human sacrifice ^ and soon made efforts to stamp out the barbarous 
 ritual even in its foreign dependencies.' Even this concession to 
 the panic of the times could not be regarded as fraught with much 
 worldly success. The gods seemed still to retain an unkind feeling 
 both to the city and the government. Two years later there was a 
 return of dreadful prodigies, and a great part of Rome was laid 
 waste by a terrible fire. A few months more and news was brought 
 from Africa which shook to its very foundations the fabric of 
 senatorial rule.* 
 
 ^ Plut. Quaest. Rom. 83 S{io /liv &vSpas Sio Se yvvatKas 4v rf fiomv ayop^ Aeyo/ieV?) 
 Touj iJLev"EK\rivas, Toij Sh ra\<iras, (avTos Karipv^av. 
 
 - ^ Plin. H. N. XXX. i. 12 DCLVII demum anno urbis Cn. Cornelio Lentulo 
 P. Licinio Crasso consulibus (97 B.C.) senatus consultum factum est ne homo im- 
 molaretur. 
 
 ^ Plut. I.e. 
 
 * Obsequens gg (37) (iii B.C.) Maxima pars urbis exusta cum aede Matris 
 Magnae ; lacte per triduum pluit, hostiisque expiatum majoribus. Jugurthinum 
 bellum exortum. The war had been determined on the year before. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE land, on which the eyes of the world were soon to be 
 fastened, was the neglected protectorate which had been 
 built up to secure the temporary purpose of the overthrow 
 of Carthage, and had since remained in the undisturbed possession 
 of the peaceful descendants of Masinissa. The fortunes of the 
 kingdom of Numidia, so far as they affected that kingdom itself, 
 deserved to be neglected by its suzerain ; for the power which Masi- 
 nissa had won by arms and diplomacy was more than sufficient to 
 protect its own interests. The Numidia of the day formed in terri- 
 torial extent one of the mightiest kingdoms of the world, and ranked 
 only second to Egypt amongst the client powers of Rome.^ It 
 extended from Mauretania to Cyrenaica,^ from the river Muluccha 
 to the greater Syrtis, thus touching on the west the Empire of the 
 Moors, at that time confined to Tingitana, on the east almost pene- 
 trating to, Egypt, and enjoying the best part of the fertile region 
 which 1)orders the coast of the Mediterranean.^ From this vast 
 tract of country Rome had cut out for herself a small section on the 
 north-east. In the creation of the province of Africa her modera- 
 tion and forbearance must have astonished her Numidian client; and, 
 if Masinissa showed signs of hesitancy in rousing himself for the 
 destruction of Carthage, the fears of his sons must have been imme- 
 diately dispelled when they saw the slender profits which Rome meant 
 to reap from the suppression of their joint rival. The Numidian 
 king^were even allowed to keep the territory which had been wrested 
 ^Jrom Carthage betwe^ the Second and Third Punic Wars. This 
 comprised the region about the Tusca, which boasted not less than 
 
 ^ Boissiere Esquisse d'une histoire de la conquete et de V administration Romaines 
 dans le Nord de VAfrique p. 41. 
 
 ^ App. Lib. 106 «irJ) Mavpovtriav tS>v irap' aiKeav^ i^eXP^ '■^^ K.vp7ii>alan> ipxvs h t4 
 
 /leirSyeia. 
 
 * Boissiere I.e. For the Moroccan boundary of the kingdom — the river Muluccha 
 or Molocath — see Gobel Die Westkiiste Afrikas im Altertum pp. 79, 80. 
 
 (315) 
 
316 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 fifty towns, the district known as the Great Plains,^ which has been 
 identified with the great basin of the Dakhla of the Oulad-bon- 
 Salem, and probably the plateau of Vaga (Bedja) which dominates 
 this basin.2 The Roman lines merely extended from the Tusca 
 (the Wad El-Kebir) in the North, where that river flows into the 
 Mediterranean opposite the island of Thabraca (Tabarka) to Thenae 
 (Henschir Tina) on the south-east.^ But even the upper waters 
 of the Tusca belonged to Numidia, as did the towns of Vaga, Sicca 
 Veneria and Zama Regia. Consequently the Roman frontier must 
 have curved eastward until it reached the point where a rocky 
 region separates the basin of the Bagradas (Medjerda) from the 
 plains of the Sahel ; thence it ran to the neighbourhood of Aquae 
 Regiae and thence, probably following the line of a ditch drawn 
 between the two great depressions of Kairouan and El-Gharra, to 
 its ultimate bourne at Thenae.* It is clear that the Romans did 
 not look on their province as an end desirable in itself. They had 
 left in the hands of their Numidian friends some of the most fertile 
 lands, some of the richest commercial towns, situated in a district 
 which they might easily have claimed. Against such annexation 
 Masinissa could have uttered no word of legitimate protest. His 
 kingdom had already been almost doubled bv the acquisition of the 
 lands of his rival Syphax, and his sons saw themselves through the aid 
 of Rome in possession of an artificially created kingdom, which was 
 so entirely out of harmony with the traditions of Numidian life that 
 it could scarcely have entered into the dreams of any prince of that 
 race. But the conquering city reposed some faith in gratitude, and 
 reposed still more in its habitual policy of caution. The province 
 which it created was simply a political and strategic necessity. It 
 was intended to secure the negative object of preventing the recon- 
 stitution of the great political and commercial centre which had 
 fallen.^ If Carthage was never to rise again, a fragment of the 
 coast-line must be kept in the hands of the possessors of its devas- 
 tated site. It might have been better for the peace of Africa had 
 the Romans been a little more grasping and had the Roman position 
 been stronger than it was. The Phoenicians scattered along the 
 coast had become familar objects to the Berber inhabitants and their 
 
 ' Twi' Kfyo/ifyay MeydKav TiiSiav (App. Lib. 68). 
 
 'Tissot Geographic comparee de la province Romaine d'Afrique ii. p. 5. 
 
 ' Plin. H. N. V. 3. 22 ; v. 4. 25 ; Ptol. iv. 3. 7. 
 
 * Tissot op. cit. ii. pp. 1-20. » Ibid. ii. p. 20. 
 
RACES OF NORTH AFRICA 317 
 
 kings ; to the enlightened monarch they were a valuable addition 
 to the population of any of his cities — all the more valuable now 
 that they were politically powerless. But with the Roman ofHcial 
 and the Roman trader it was different. Here was an alien and (in 
 spite of the restraint of the government) an encroaching civilisation, 
 utterly unfamiliar to the eyes of the natives, but known to justify 
 its lordly security by that dim background of power which clung 
 to the name of the paramount city of the West. The Roman 
 possessions were an ugly eyesore to a man who held that Africa 
 should be for the Africans. The wise Masinissa might tolerate 
 the spectacle, content (as, indeed, he should have been) with the 
 power and security which Rome's friendship had brought to her 
 ally. But it remained to be seen whether his views would always 
 be held by his own subjects or by some less cautious or less happily 
 placed successor of his own line. 
 
 It was indeed possible that a hostile feeling of nationality might 
 be awakened beyond the limits even of the great kingdom of 
 Numidia. The designations which the Romans employ for the 
 natives of North Africa obscure the fact, which was recognised in 
 later times by the Arab conquerors, of the unity of the great 
 Berber folk.^ Roman historians and geographers speak of the 
 Numidians and Mauretanians as though they were distinct peoples ; 
 but there can be little doubt that, then as to-day, they were but two 
 fractions of the same great race, and that even the wild Gaetulians 
 of the South are but representatives of the parent stock of this 
 indigenous people. As in the case of nearly all races which in 
 default of historical data we are forced to call indigenous, two 
 separate elements may be distinguished in this stock, an earlier and a 
 later, and survivals of the original distinctions between these elements 
 were clearly discernible in many parts of Northern Africa ; but, as 
 the fusion between these stocks had been effected in prehistoric times, 
 a common Berber nationality may be held to have extended from the 
 Atlantic almost to Egypt, at the time when the Romans were added 
 to the immigrant Semites and Greeks who had already sought to 
 dwell amidst its borders. The basis of this nationality is thought 
 to be found in the aborigines of the Sahara who had gradually 
 moved up from the desert to the present littoral. There they 
 
 p. 39. 
 
 / 
 ■ Mercier La population indigene de VAfrique pp. 129, 130 ; Boissiere op. cit. 
 
318 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 were joined by a race of another type who were wending their way 
 from what is now the continent of Europe. The Saharic man was 
 of a dark-brown colour but with no traces of the negroid type. 
 His European comrade was a man of fair complexion and light hair ; 
 and these curiously blended races continued to live side by side and 
 to form a single nation, preserving perhaps each some of its own 
 psychical characteristics, but speaking in common the language of 
 the older Saharic stock.^ But the two races were not uniformly 
 distributed over the various territories of Northern Africa. The 
 white race was perhaps more in evidence in Mauretania, as it is in 
 the Morocco of to-day ; ^ the dark race was probably most strongly 
 represented amongst the Gaetulians of the South. There were, 
 in short, in Northern Africa two zones, marked by differences of 
 civilisation as well as of ethnic descent, which were clearly dis- 
 tinguished in antiquity. The first is represented by the Afri, 
 Numidians, and Moors, who inhabited the coast region from East to 
 West. These were early subjected to alien influences, the greatest 
 of which, before the coming of the Roman, was the advent of the 
 Semite. The second is shown by the vast aggregate of tribes which 
 form a curve along the south from the ocean to the Cyrenaica. 
 These tribes, which were called by the common name of Gaetuli, 
 were almost exempt from European influences in historic, and prob- 
 ably in prehistoric, times. A few intermingled with the Aethio- 
 pians of the Sahara,^ but, taken as a whole, they are believed to 
 represent the primitive race of brown Saharic dwellers in all its 
 purity. 
 
 Had the term Nomad or Numidian been applied to the southern 
 races, the designation might have been justified by the migratory 
 character of their life. But it is more than questionable whether 
 the designation is defensible as applied to the people to whom it is 
 usually attached. The Numidians do not seem to have possessed 
 either the character or habits of a genuinely nomadic people such 
 as the Arabs.* They hved in huts and not in tents. These huts 
 (mapalia), which had the form of an upturned boat, may have 
 seemed a poor habitation to Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans ; 
 
 1 Tissot op. cii. i. pp. 400 foil. For the extension of the native Libyan language 
 cf. Boissiere, L'Afrique Romaine p. S. 
 
 " Tissot op. cit. pp. 403, 404. 
 
 ^ Hence the MfAai'o^o.ToBA.oi and the AewcoiWoirtj of Ptolemy (iv. 6, 5 and 6.) 
 See Tissot op. cit. p. 447. 
 
 * Mercier op cii. p. 136. 
 
THE NUMIDIANS 819 
 
 but, as habitations, they were meant to be permanent ; they were 
 an index of the possession of property, of a lasting attachment to the 
 soil The village formed by a group of these little homes clustering 
 round a steep height, was a still further index of a political and 
 military society that intended to maintain and defend the area on 
 which it had settled. The pages of Sallust give ample evidence of 
 an active village life engrossed with the toils of agriculture, and the 
 mass of the population of the region of the Tell must have been for a 
 long time fixed to the soil which yielded it a livelihood. Elsewhere 
 there was indeed need of something like periodic migration. On the 
 high plateaux pastoral life made the usual change from summer to 
 winter stations necessary. But this regulated movement does not 
 correspond strictly to the desultory life of a truly nomadic people. 
 Yet it is easy to see how, in contrast to the regular and often 
 sedentary mercantile life of the Phoenician and the Greek, that of 
 the Numidian might be considered wild and migratory. He was in 
 truth a " trekker " rather than a nomad, and he possessed the in- 
 valuable military attributes of the man unchained by cities and 
 accustomed to wander far in a hard and bracing country. A skill 
 in horsemanship that was the wonder of the world, the eye for a 
 country hastily traversed, the memory for the spot once seen, the 
 power of rapid mobilisation and of equally rapid disappearance, the 
 gift of being a knight one day, a shepherd or a peasant the next — 
 these were the attributes that made a Roman conquest of Numidia 
 so long impossible and rendered diplomacy imperative as a supple- 
 ment to war. 
 
 It is less easy to reconstruct the moral and political attributes 
 of this people from the data which we at present possess, or to re- 
 concile the experience of to-day with the impressions of ancient 
 historians. But so permanent has been the great bulk of the popu- 
 lation of Northern Africa that it is tempting to interpret the 
 ancient Numidian in the light of the modem Kabyle. One who 
 has had experience of the latter endows him with an intelligent 
 head, a frank and open physiognomy and a lively eye, describes him 
 as active and enterprising, lively and excitable, possessed of moral 
 pride, eminently truthful, a stern holder of his plighted word and a 
 respecter of women — a respect shown by the general practice of 
 monogamy.^ Even when stirred to war he is said not to lend him- 
 
 • Mercier I.e. ' Tissot op. cit. i. pp. 414-17. 
 
A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 self to unnecessary cruelty.i The activity, liveliness and excitability 
 of this people may be traced in the accounts of antiquity ; but 
 Roman records would add the impression of duplicity, treachery and 
 cruelty as characteristics of the race. Yet as these characteristics 
 are exhibited in the record of a great national war against a hated 
 invader, and are chiefly illustrated in the persons of a king or his 
 ministers— individuals spoilt by power or maddened by fear— we 
 need not perhaps attach too much importance to the discrepancy 
 between the evidence of the ancient and modern world. 
 
 Much of the history of Numidia, especially during the epoch of 
 the war of the Romans against Jugurtha, would be illuminated if 
 we could interpret the political tendencies of its ancient inhabitants 
 by those of the Kabyle of modern times. The latter is said to be a 
 sturdy democrat, founding his society on the ideas of equality and 
 individuality. Each member of this society enjoys the same rights 
 and is bound down to the same duties. There is no military 
 or religious nobility, there are no hereditary chiefs. The aifairs 
 of the society, about which all can speak or vote, are admin- 
 istered by simple delegates.^ There is nothing in the history of 
 the war with Jugurtha to belie these characteristics, there is much 
 which confirms them. In the narrative of that war there is no 
 mention of a nobility. The influential men described are simply 
 those who have been elevated by wealth or familiarity with the 
 king. The monarchy itself is a great power where the king is 
 present, but the life of the community is not broken when the 
 king is a fugitive ; and loyalty to the crown centres round a great 
 personality, who is expected to drive the hated invaders into the 
 sea, not merely round the name of a legitimate dynasty. 
 
 Monarchy, in fact, seems a kind of artificial product in Nu- 
 midia ; but, artificial as it may have been, it had done good work. 
 An active reign of more than fifty years by a man who united 
 the absolutism of the savage potentate with the wisdom and expe- 
 rience of the civilised ruler, had produced eiFects in Numidia that 
 could never die. Masinissa had proved what Numidian agricul- 
 
 ' Boissiere (op. cit. p. loi) cites an interesting description of the Kabyle from 
 Le capitaine Rinn. In it occur the following words : — La guerre pour lui (le 
 Kabyle) est une affaire de devoir, de n^cessitS, de point d'honneur ou de vengeance ; 
 ce n'est jamais ni un plaisir, ni une distraction, ni meme un ^tat normal ; il ne la 
 fait qu'apres pr^venu son ennemi, et, dans le combat ou apres la victoire, il n'a pas 
 de cruaut^ inutile. 
 
 'Tissot op. cit. i. pp. 417-18. 
 
148 B.C.] THE NUMIDIAN MONARCHY 321 
 
 ture might become under the guidance of scientific rules by the 
 creation of model farms, whose fertile acres showed that cultivated 
 plants of every kind could be grown on native soil ; ^ while under 
 his rule and that of his son Micipsa the life of the city showed 
 the same progress as that of the country. Numidia could not 
 become one of the granaries of the world without its capital rising 
 to the rank of a great commercial city. Cirta, though situated 
 some forty-eight Roman miles from the sea,^ was soon sought by 
 the Greeks, those ubiquitous bankers of the Mediten-anean world,^ 
 while Roman and Italian capitalists eagerly plied their business in 
 this new and attractive sphere which had been presented to their 
 efforts by the conquests of Rome and the civilising energy of its 
 native rulers. 
 
 The kingdom of Numidia suffered from a weakness common to 
 monarchies where the strong spirits of subjects and local chiefs can 
 be controlled only by the still stronger hand of the central poten- 
 tate, and where the practice of polygamy and concubinage in the 
 royal house sometimes gave rise to many pretenders but to no heir 
 with an indefeasible claim to rule. There was no settled principle 
 of succession to the throne, and the death of the sovereign for the 
 time being threatened the peace or unity of the kingdom, while it 
 entailed grave responsibilities upon its nominal protector. Masi- 
 nissa himself had been excluded from the throne by an uncle,* and 
 but for his vigour and energy might have remained the subject of 
 succeeding pretenders. 
 
 A. crisis was threatened at his own decease but was happily 
 averted by the prudence of the dying monarch. Loath as he prob- 
 ably was to acknowledge the supremacy of Rome, he thrust on her 
 the invidious task of deciding the succession to the throne. He 
 felt that Roman authority would be more effective than paternal 
 wishes ; perhaps he saw that amongst his sons there was not one 
 who could be trusted alone and unaided to continue to build up the 
 fortunes of the state and to claim recognition from his brothers as 
 their undisputed lord, while the show of submission to Rome might 
 weaken the vigilance and disarm the jealousy of the protecting 
 
 1 Polyb. xxxvii. 3 ; Diod. xxxii. 17. 
 
 ^ Plin. H. N. V. 3 22. sgtrabo xvii. 3. 13. 
 
 * Livy says (xxix. 29) that this was the admitted order of succession (ita mos 
 apud Numidas est). The brother of a late king was probably considered to be the 
 /most capable successor. An immature son would be passed over. Cf. Biereye 
 Res Numidarum et Maurorum p. 18. 
 
 21 
 
322 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 148-118 
 
 power. Scipio was summoned to his deathbed to apportion the 
 kingdom between the legitimate sons who survived him, Micipsa, 
 Gulussa and Mastanabal.i To Micipsa was given the capital 
 Cirta, the royal palace and the genera! administration of the king- 
 dom, the warlike Gulussa was made commander-in-chief, while 
 to Mastanabal the youngest was assigned the task of directing the 
 judicial affairs of the dominion.^ This division of authority was 
 soon disturbed by the death of the two younger brothers, and Micipsa 
 was left alone to indulge his peaceful inclinations during a long and 
 uneventful reign of nearly thirty years. The fall of Carthage had 
 left him free from all irritating external relations ; for the King of 
 Numidia was no longer required to act the part of a constant spy 
 on the actions, and an occasional trespasser on the territory, of the 
 greatest of African powers. The nearest scene of disturbance was 
 the opposite continent of Spain, and here he did Rome good service 
 by sending her assistance against Viriathus and the Numantines.^ 
 Unvexed by troubles within his borders, Micipsa devoted his life to 
 the arts of peace. He beautified Cirta and attracted Greek settlers 
 to the town, amongst them men of arts and learning, who delighted 
 the king with their literary and philosophic discourse.* The period 
 of rest fostered the resources of the kingdom, and in spite of a devastat- 
 ing pestilence which is said to have swept oiF eight hundred thousand 
 of the king's subjects,* the state could boast at his death of a regular 
 army of ten thousand cavalry and twenty thousand foot.^ This was 
 but the nucleus of the host that might be raised in the interior, and 
 swelled by the border tribes of Numidia ; and the man who could 
 win the confidence of the soldiers and the attachment of the peasantry 
 held the fortune of Numidia in his hands. This reflection may have 
 cast a shadow over the latter years of Micipsa. Certainly the pros- 
 pect of the succession was as dark to him as it had been to his 
 father, Masinissa. Like his predecessor he believed that a dynasty 
 was stronger than an individual, and he deliberately imitated the 
 work of Scipio by leaving a collegiate rule to his successors. One of 
 these successors, however, was not his own offspring. His brother 
 Mastanabal had left behind him an illegitimate son named Jugurtha. 
 The boy had been neglected during the lifetime of his grandfather, 
 
 1 Liv. Ep. 1. ; Val. Max. v, 2, ext. 4 ; Oros. iv. 22. 
 
 => App. Lib. 106. s App. Hisp. 67 ; Sail. Jug. 7. 
 
 ■* Strabo. xvii. 3. 13 ; Diod. xxxiv. 35. 
 
 " Oros. V. II. 6 Strabo I.e. 
 
148-118 B.C.] JUGURTHA 
 
 Masinissa; perhaps the hope that Mastanabal might yet beget a 
 representative worthy of the succession caused little importance to 
 be attached to the concubine's son, in spite of the fact that it was 
 the policy of the Numidian monarchs to keep as many heirs in 
 reserve as it was possible for them to procure. But when Gauda, 
 the only legitimate son of Mastanabal, proved to be weak in body 
 and deficient in mind,^ greater regard was paid to the vigorous boy 
 who was now the sole efficient representative of one branch of the 
 late dynasty. Even without this motive the kindly nature of 
 Micipsa would probably have led him to look with favour on the 
 orphan child of his brother ; the young Jugurtha was reared in 
 the palace and educated with the heirs presumptive, Adherbal and 
 Hiempsal, the two sons of the reigning king. It soon became mani- 
 fest that a very lion had been begotten and was growing to strength 
 in the precincts of the royal court. All the graces of the love-bom 
 oifspring seem to have been present at Jugurtha's birth. A mighty 
 frame, a handsome face, were amongst his lesser gifts. More re- 
 markable were the vigour and acuteness of his mind, the moral 
 strength which yielded to no temptation of ease or indolence, the 
 keen zest for life which led him to throw himself into the hardy 
 sports of his youthful compeers, to run, to ride, to hurl the javelin 
 with a skill known only to the nomad, the bonhomie and bright 
 good temper which endeared him to the comrades whom his skill 
 had vanquished. Much of his leisure was passed in tracking the 
 wild beasts of the desert ; his skill as a hunter was matchless, or was 
 equalled only by his easy indifference to his success.^ 
 
 The sight of these qualities gladdened Micipsa's heart ; for the 
 military leader, so essential to the safety of the Numidian monarchy, 
 seemed to be now assured. We are told that a shade of anxiety 
 crossed his mind when he compared the youth of his own sons with 
 the glorious manhood of Jugurtha, and thought of the temptations 
 which the prospect of an undivided monarchy might present to a 
 mind gradually weaned from loyalty by the very sense of its own 
 
 1 Sail. yug. 65. I Morbis confectus et ob earn causam mente paulum inminuta. 
 We are not told that he was in this condition before Micipsa's death ; but it is perhaps 
 the reason why the king left him only " heir in remainder " (secundum heredem) to the 
 crown. Another aspirant appears later on in the person of Massiva son of Gulussa 
 (Sail. yug. 35. i), but this prince may not have been born, or may have been an 
 infant, at the time when Jugurtha was recognised as a possible successor. It is 
 possible that Massiva may have been mentioned as one of the supplementary heirs 
 in Micipsa's vf ill, although Sallust does not inform us of the fact. 
 
 1 Sail. yug. 6. I. 
 
A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 134-133 
 
 greatness ; ^ but there is no reason to believe that the good old king 
 allowed his imagination to embrace visions of the dagger or the 
 poisoned bowl, and that the mysterious death of his nephew was 
 only hindered by the thought of the resentment which it would 
 arouse amongst the Numidian chiefs and their dependents. Cer- 
 tainly the mission with which Jugurtha was soon credited — the 
 mission which was perhaps to alter the whole tone of his mind and 
 to concentrate its enei'gies on an unlawful end — was one which any 
 Numidian king might have destined for the most favoured of his 
 sons. Jugurtha was to be sent to Numantia to lead the Numidian 
 auxiliaries of horse and foot, to be a member of the charmed circle 
 that surrounded Scipio, to see, as he moved amongst the young no- 
 bility, the promise of greatness that was in store for Rome in the 
 field whether of politics or of war, to form perhaps binding friend- 
 ships and to lay up stores of gratitude for future use. In dismissing 
 his nephew, Micipsa was putting the issue into the hands of fate. 
 Jugurtha might never return ; but, if he did, it would be with an 
 experience and a prestige which would render him more than ever 
 the certain arbiter of the destinies of the kingdom. 
 
 The advantage which Jugurtha took of this marvellous oppor- 
 tunity was a product of his nature and proves no ulterior design. 
 Had he been the simplest and most loyal of souls, he would have 
 been forced to act as he did. As a man of insight he soon learnt 
 Scipio by heart, as a born strategist and trained hunter he soon 
 saw through the tricks of the enemy, as a man devoid of the phy- 
 sical sense of fear he was foremost in every action. He had grasped 
 at once the secret of Roman discipline, and his habit of implicit 
 obedience to the word of command was as remarkable as his readi- 
 ness in offering the right suggestion, when his opinion was asked. 
 Intelligence was not a striking feature in the mental equipment of 
 the staiF which suiTounded Scipio ; it was grasped by the general 
 wherever found without respect to rank or nationality ; and while 
 Marius was rising step by step in virtue of his proved efficiency, the 
 Numidian prince, who might have been merely an ornamental adjunct 
 to the army, was made the leader or participant in almost every enter- 
 prise which demanded a shrewd head and a stout heart. The favour 
 of Scipio increased from day to day.^ This was to be won by merit 
 and success alone. With Romans of a weaker mould Jugurtha's 
 
 1 Sail. Jug. 6. 2. 8 Ibid. ^. 6. 
 
134-133 B.C.] JUGURTHA AT NUMANTIA 325 
 
 wealth and social qualities produced a similar result. He enter- 
 tained lavishly, he was clever, good-natured and amusing. He 
 chai'med the Romans whom he excelled as in his childish days he 
 had charmed the Numidian boys whom he outraced. 
 
 In these rare intervals of rest from warfare there was oppor- 
 tunity for converse with men of influence and rank. Jugurtha's 
 position and the future of Numidia were sometimes discussed, and 
 the youthful wiseacres who claimed his friendship would sometimes 
 suggest, with the cheerful cynicism which springs from a shallow 
 dealing with imperial interests, that merit such as his could find its 
 fitting sphere only if he were the sole occupant of the Numidian 
 throne.^ The words may often have been spoken in jest or idle 
 compliment ; although some who used them may have meant them 
 to be an expression of the maxim that a protectorate is best served 
 by a strong servant, and that a divided principality contains in 
 itself the seeds of disturbance. Others went so far as to suggest 
 the means as well as the end. Should difficulties arise with Rome, 
 might not the assent of the great powers be purchased with a 
 price ? Scipio had not been blind to the colloquies of his favourite. 
 When Numantia had been destroyed and the army was folding 
 its tents, he gave Jugurtha the benefit of a public ovation and a 
 private admonition. Before the tribunal he decorated him with 
 the prizes of war, and spoke fervidly in his praise ; then he invited 
 him secretly to his tent and gave him his word of warning. " The 
 friendship of the Roman people should be sought from the Roman 
 people itself; no good could come of securing the support of indi- 
 viduals by equivocal means ; there was a danger in purchasing 
 public interest from a handful of vendors who professed to have 
 power to sell ; Jugurtha's own qualities were his best asset ; they 
 would secure him glory and a crown ; if he tried to hasten on the 
 course of events, the material means on which he relied might 
 themselves provoke his utter ruin." ^ 
 
 On one point only Scipio seems to have been in agreement with 
 the evil counsellors of Jugurtha. He seems to have believed that the 
 true guardian of Numidia had been found, and the prince took with 
 him a splendid testimonial to be presented to his uncle Micipsa. 
 Scipio wrote in glowing terms of the great qualities which Jugurtha 
 had displayed throughout the war ; he expressed his own delight 
 
 ^ Sail yug. S. I. ■'Ibid.S.2. 
 
326 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 118 
 
 at these services, his own intention of making them known to the 
 senate and Roman people, his sense of the joy that they must have 
 brought to the monarch himself. His old friendship with Micipsa 
 justified a word of congratulation ; the prince was worthy of his 
 uncle and of his grandfather Masinissa.i 
 
 Whatever Micipsa's later intentions may have been, whether 
 under ordinary circumstances his natural benevolence and even his 
 patriotism would have continued to war with an undefined feeling 
 of distrust, this letter relieved his doubts, if only because it showed 
 that Jugurtha could never fill a private station. The act of adop- 
 tion was immediately accomplished, and a testament was drawn up 
 by which Jugurtha was named joint heir with Micipsa's own sons 
 to the throne of Numidia.^ A few years later the aged king lay on 
 his deathbed. As he felt his end approaching, he is said to have 
 summoned his friends and relatives together with his two sons, 
 and in their presence to have made a parting appeal to Jugurtha. 
 He reminded him of past kindnesses but acknowledged the ample 
 return ; he had made Jugurtha, but Jugurtha had made the 
 Numidian name again glorious amongst the Romans and in Spain. 
 He exhorted him to protect the youthful princes who would be his 
 colleagues on the throne, and reminded him that in the main- 
 tenance of concord lay the future strength of the kingdom. He 
 appealed to Jugurtha as a guardian rather than as a mere co- 
 regent ; for the power and name of the mature and distinguished 
 ruler would render him chiefly responsible for harmony or dis- 
 cord ; and he besought his sons to respect their cousin, to emu- 
 late his virtues, to prove to the world that their father was as 
 fortunate in the children whom nature had given him as in the 
 one who had been the object of his adoption.' The appeal was 
 answered by Jugurtha with a goodly show of feeling and respect, 
 and a few days later the old king passed away. The hour which 
 closed his splendid obsequies was the last in which even a show of 
 concord was preserved between the ill-assorted trio who were now 
 the rulers of Numidia. The position of Jugurtha was difficult 
 enough ; for to rule would mean either the reduction of his cousins 
 to impotence or the perpetual thwarting of his plans by crude and 
 
 1 Sail. Jug. g. I. 
 
 ^ Statimque eum adoptavit et testamento pariter cum filiis heredem instituit 
 (Ibid. g. 3). 
 ' Ibid. lo. 
 
118 B.C.] DEATH OF MICIPSA 327 
 
 suspicious counsels. For that these would be suspicious as well as 
 crude, was soon revealed : and the situation was immediately ren- 
 dered intolerable by the conduct of Hiempsal. This prince, the 
 younger of the two brothers, was a headstrong boy filled with a 
 sense of resentment at Jugurtha's elevation to the throne and 
 smarting at the neglect of what he held to be the legitimate claim 
 to the succession. When the first meeting of the joint rulers was 
 held in the throne room, Hiempsal hurried to a seat at the right 
 of Adherbal, that Jugurtha might not occupy the place of honour 
 in the centre ; it was with difficulty that he was induced by the 
 entreaties of his brother to yield to the claims of age and to move 
 to the seat on the other side. This struggle for precedence 
 heralded the coming storm. In the course of a long discussion on 
 the affairs of the kingdom Jugurtha threw out the suggestion that 
 it might be advisable to rescind the resolutions and decrees of the 
 last five years, since during that period age had impaired the facul- 
 ties of Micipsa. Hiempsal said that he agreed, since it was within the 
 last three years that Jugurtha had been adopted to a share in the 
 throne. The object of this remark betrayed little emotion ; but it 
 was believed that the peevish insult was the stimulus to an anxious 
 train of thought which, as was to be expected from the resolute 
 character of the thinker, soon issued into action. To be a usurper 
 was better than to be thought one ; the first situation entailed 
 power, the second only danger. Anger played its part no doubt ; 
 but in a temperament like Jugurtha's such an emotion was more 
 likely to be the justification than the cause of a crime. His 
 thoughts from that moment were said to have been bent on en- 
 snaring the impetuous Hiempsal. But guile moves slowly, and 
 Jugurtha would not wait.^ 
 
 The first meeting of the kings had given so thorough a proof 
 of the impossibility of united rule that a resolution was soon 
 framed to divide the treasures and territories of the monarchy. A 
 time was fixed for the partition of the domains, and a still earlier 
 date for the division of the accumulated wealth. The kings mean- 
 while quitted the capital to reside in close propinquity to their 
 cherished treasures. HiempsaPs temporary home was in the forti- 
 fied town of Thirmida,^ and, as chance would have it, he occupied 
 a house which belonged to a man who had once been a confidential 
 
 1 Sail. Jug. II. 
 
 ^Ibid. 12. 3. The site of Thirmida is unknown. 
 
328 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. li6 
 
 attendant on Jugurtha.i The inner history of the events which 
 followed could never have been known with certainty ; but it was 
 believed that Jugurtha induced this man to visit the house under 
 some pretext and bring back impressions of the keys. The security 
 of Hiempsal's person and treasures was supposed to be guaranteed 
 by his regularly receiving into his own hands the keys of the gates 
 after they had been locked ; but a night came in which the portals 
 were noiselessly opened and a band of soldiers burst into the house. 
 They divided into parties, ranging each room in turn, prying into 
 every recess, bursting doors that barred their entrance, stabbing 
 the attendants, some in their sleep, others as they ran to meet the 
 invadei's. At last Hiempsal was found crouching in a servant's 
 room ; he was slain and beheaded, and those who held Jugurtha to 
 be the author of the crime reported that the head of the murdered 
 prince was brought to him as a pledge of the accomplished act.^ 
 
 The news of the crime was soon spread through the whole of 
 Northern Africa. It divided Numidia into two camps. Adherbal 
 was forced by panic to arm in his own defence, and most of those 
 who remained loyal to the memory of Micipsa gathered to the 
 standard of the legitimate heir. But Jugurtha's fame amongst the 
 fighting men of the kingdom stood him in good stead. His ad- 
 herents were the fewer in number, but they were the more effective 
 warriors.^ He rapidly gathered such forces as were available, and 
 dashed from city to city, capturing some by storm and receiving the 
 voluntary submission of others. He had plunged boldly into a civil 
 war, and by his action declared the coveted prize to be nothing less 
 than the possession of the whole Numidian kingdom. But bold- 
 ness was his best policy ; Rome might more readily condone a con- 
 quest than a rebellion, and be more willing to recognise a king than 
 a claimant. 
 
 Adherbal meanwhile had sent an embassy to the protecting 
 State, to inform the senate of his brother's murder and his own evil 
 plight. But, diffident as he was, he must have felt that a passive 
 endurance of the outrages inflicted by Jugurtha dimmed his prestige 
 and imperilled his position ; he found himself at the head of the 
 larger army, and trusting to his superiority in numbers ventured to 
 
 1 Sallust, using Roman phraseology, says that he had been " proxumus lictor 
 Jugurthae" {I.e.). Such a lictor would stand nearest the magistrate, receive his 
 immediate orders and be, therefore, presumably a more trusted and intimate servant. 
 
 ■' Sail. yug. 12. 
 
 * In duas partis discedunt Numidae ; plures Adherbalem secuntur, sed ilium 
 alterum bello meliores {Ibid, 13. i). 
 
116 B.C.] ADHERBAL AT ROME 329 
 
 risk a battle with his veteran enemy. The first conflict was decisive ; 
 his forces were so utterly routed that he despaired of maintaining 
 his position in any part of the kingdom. He fled from the battle- 
 field to the province of Africa and thence took ship to Rome.^ 
 
 Jugurtha was now undisputed master of the whole of Numidia 
 and had leisure to think out the situation. It could not have needed 
 much reflection to show that the safer course lay in making an ap- 
 peal to Rome. It was no part of his plan to detach Numidia entirely 
 from the imperial city ; even if such an end were desirable, a national 
 war could not be successfully waged by a people divided in allegiance, 
 against a state whose tenacious policy and inexhaustible resources 
 were only too well known to Jugurtha. But he also knew that 
 Rome, though tenacious, had the tolerance which springs from the 
 unwillingness to waste blood and treasure on a matter of such little 
 importance as a change in the occupancy of a subject throne, that 
 a dynastic quarrel would seem to many ilasi senators a part of the 
 order of nature in a barbarian monarchy, that it is usually to the 
 interest of a protecting state to recognise a king in fact as one in 
 law, and that he himself possessed many powerful friends in the cap^ 
 ital and had been told on good authority that royal presents judi- 
 ciously distributed might confirm or even mould opinion. Within 
 a few days of his victory he had despatched to Rome an embassy 
 well equipped with gold and silver. His ambassadors were to con- 
 firm the afiection of his old friends, to win new ones to his cause, 
 and to spare no pains to gain any fraction of support that a bounti- 
 ful generosity could buy.^ Possibly few, who received courteous 
 visits or missives from these envoys, would have admitted that they 
 had been bribed. It was the custom of kings to send presents, and 
 they did but answer to the call of an old acquaintance and a man 
 who had done signal service to Rome. The news of Hiempsal's 
 tragic end, the flight and arrival of his exiled brother, had at the 
 moment caused a painful sensation in Roman circles. Now many 
 members of the nobility plucked up courage to remark that there 
 might be another side to the question. The newly gilded youth 
 thronged their seniors in the senate and begged that no inconsiderate 
 resolution should be taken against Jugurtha. The envoys, as men 
 conscious of their virtue, calmly expressed their readiness to await 
 the senate's pleasure. The appointed day arrived, and Adherbal, 
 who appeared in person, unfolded the tale of his wrongs.^ 
 
 ' Sail. fug. 13. 4. 2 Ibid. 13. 6. » Ibid. 14. 
 
330 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. Il6 
 
 Apart from the emotions of pity and consequent sympathy 
 which may have been awakened in some breasts by the story of the 
 ruined and exiled king, his appeal— passionate, vigorous and telling 
 as it was — could not have been listened to with any great degree of 
 pleasure by the assembled fathers; for it brought home to the 
 government of a protecting state that most unpleasant of lessons, 
 its duty to the protected. With the ingenuity of despair Adherbal 
 exaggerated the degree of Roman government, in order to emphasise 
 the moral and political obligations of the rulers to their depend- 
 ents. If the King of Numidia was a mere agent of the imperial 
 city,i subordinating his wishes to her ends, seeing the security of 
 his own possessions in the extension of her influence alone, clinging 
 to her friendship with a trust as firm as that inspired by ties of 
 blood, it was the duty of the mistress to protect such a servant, 
 and to avenge an outrage which reflected alike on her gratitude and 
 her authority. It had been a maxim of Micipsa's that the clients of 
 Rome supported a heavy burden, but were amply compensated by 
 the immunity from danger that they enjoyed. And, if Rome did 
 not protect, to whom could a client-king look for aid .? His very 
 service to Rome had made him the enemy of all neighbouring 
 powers. It was true that Adherbal could claim little in his own 
 right ; he was a suppliant before he could be a benefactor, stripped 
 of all power of benefiting his great protector before his devotion 
 could be put to the test. Yet he could claim a debt ; for he was 
 the sole relic of a dynasty that had given their all to Rome. Ju- 
 gurtha was destroying a family whose loyalty had stood every test, 
 he was committing horrid atrocities on the friends of Rome, his 
 insolence and impunity were inflicting as grave an injury on the 
 Roman name as on the wretched victims of his cruelty. 
 
 Such was the current of subtle and cogent reasoning that ran 
 through the passionate address of the exiled king, crying for ven- 
 geance, but above all for justice. The answer of Jugurtha's envoys 
 was brief and to the point. They had only to state their fictitious 
 case. A plausible case was all that was needed ; their advocates 
 would do the rest. Hiempsal, they urged, had been put to death 
 by the Numidians in consequence of the cruelty of his rule. Ad- 
 
 • Sallust (I.e.) makes Adherbal say " Micipsa pater meus moriens mihi praecepit, 
 ut regni Numidiae tantum modo procurationem existumarem meam, ceterum jus et 
 imperium ejus penes vos esse"- The "jus et imperium" have no true application 
 to a piotectoiate. 
 
116 B.C.] DECISION OF THE SENATE 331 
 
 herbal had been the aggressor in the late war. He had suffered 
 defeat, and was now petitioning for help because he had found 
 himself unable to perpetrate the wrong which he had intended. 
 Jugurtha entreated the senate to let the knowledge which had been 
 gained of him at Numantia guide their opinion of him now, and to 
 set his own past deeds before the words of a personal enemy.^ Both 
 parties then withdrew and the senate fell to debate. 
 
 It is sufficiently likely that, even had there been no corruption 
 or suspicion of corruption, the opinions of the House would have 
 been divided on the question that was put before them. Some 
 minds naturally suspicious might have been doubtful of the facts. 
 Were Hiempsal's death and Adherbal's flight due to national 
 discontent or the unprovoked ambition of Jugurtha ? If the 
 former was the case, was the restoration of the king to an unwill- 
 ing people by an armed force a measure conducive to the interest 
 of the protecting state .'' But even some who accepted Adherbal's 
 statement of the case, may have doubted the wisdom of a policy 
 of armed intervention; for it was manifest that a considerable 
 degree of force would have to be employed to lead Jugurtha to 
 relinquish his claims and to stamp out the loyalty of his adherents. 
 The senate could have been in no humour for another African war ; 
 they regarded their policy as closed in that quarter of the world ; 
 they had shifted the burden of frontier defence on to the Kings 
 of Numidia, and must have viewed with alarm the prospect of 
 something far worse than a frontier war arising from the quarrels of 
 those kings. It is probable, therefore, that proposals for a peaceful 
 settlement would in any case have commanded the respectful atten- 
 tion of the senate ; had these been made with a show of decency, 
 with a general recognition of Adherbal's claims, and some censure 
 of Jugurtha's overbearing conduct (for this must have been better 
 attested than his share in Hiempsal's death), but little adverse 
 comment might have been excited by the tone of the debate. As it 
 was, when member after member rose, lauded Jugurtha's merits to 
 the skies and poured contempt on the statements of Adherbal,^ an 
 unpleasant feeling was excited that this fervour was not wholly due 
 to a patriotic interest in the security of the empire. The very bois- 
 terousness of the championship induced a more rigorous attitude 
 on the part of those who had not been approached by Jugurtha's 
 
 I Sail. Jug. 15. I. ^ Ibid. 15. 2. 
 
A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 116 
 
 envoys or had resisted their overtures. They maintained that 
 Adherbal must be helped at all costs, and that strict punishment 
 should be exacted for Hiempsal's murder. This minority found an 
 ardent advocate in Scaurus, the keeper of the conscience of the 
 senate, the man who knew better than any that an individual or a 
 government lives by its reputation, who saw with horror that no 
 specious pretexts were being employed to clothe a policy which the 
 malevolent might interpret as a political crime, and that the sinister 
 rumours which had been current in Rome were finding their open 
 verification in the senate. A vigorous championship of the cause 
 of right from the foremost politician of the day, might not in- 
 fluence the decision of the House, and would certainly not lead to a 
 quixotic policy of armed intervention ; but it might prove to critics 
 of the government that the inevitable decision had not been reached 
 wholly in defiance of the claims of the suppliant and wholly in obe- 
 dience to the machinations of a usurper. The decision, which closed 
 the unreal debate, recognised Jugurtha and Adherbal as joint rulers 
 of Numidia. It wilfully ignored Hiempsal's death, it wantonly ex- 
 posed the lamb to the wolf, it was worthless as a settlement of the 
 dynastic question, unless Jugurtha's supporters entertained the 
 pious hope that their favourite's ambition might be satisfied with 
 the increase now granted to his wealth and territory, and that his 
 prudence might withhold him from again testing the forbearance 
 of the protecting power. But those who possessed keener insight 
 or who knew Jugurtha better, must have foreseen the probable 
 result of the impunity which had been granted ; they must have 
 presaged, with anxious foreboding or with patient cynicism, the final 
 disappearance of Adherbal from the scene and a fresh request for 
 the settlement of the Numidian question, which would have become 
 less complex when there was but one candidate for the throne. The 
 decree of the senate enjoined the creation of a commission of ten, 
 which should visit Numidia and divide the whole of the kingdom 
 which had been possessed by Micipsa, between the rival chiefs.^ 
 The head of the commission was Lucius Opimius, whose influence 
 amongst the members of his order had never waned since he had 
 exercised and proved his right of saving the State from the threat- 
 ened dangers of sedition. His selection on this occasion gave an 
 air of impartiality to the commission, for he was known to be no 
 friend to Jugurtha.^ 
 
 » Sail. yug. 16. a. » Ibid. 16. 3. 
 
116 B.C.] DIVISION OF NUMIDIA 
 
 That prince, however, did not allow his past relations to be an 
 obstacle to his present enterprise. The conquest of Opimius was 
 the immediate object to which he devoted all his energies. As 
 soon as the commissioners had appeared on African soil, they and 
 their chief were received with the utmost deference by the king. 
 The frequent and secret colloquies which took place between the 
 arbitrators and one of the parties interested in their decision were 
 not a happy omen for an impartial judgment, and, if the award 
 could by the exercise of malevolent ingenuity be interpreted as 
 unfair, would certainly breed the suspicion, and, in case the matter 
 was ever submitted to a hostile court of law, the proof that the 
 honour of the commissioners had succumbed to the usual vulgar 
 and universally accredited methods of corruption. On the face of 
 it the award seemed eminently just. Numidia was becoming a 
 commercial and agricultural state ; but since commerce and agri- 
 culture did not flourish in the same domains, it was impossible to 
 endow each of the claimants equally with both these sources of 
 wealth. To Adherbal was given that part of the kingdom which 
 in its external attributes seemed the more desirable ; he was to rule 
 over the eastern half of Numidia which bordered on the Roman 
 province, the portion of the country which enjoyed a readier access 
 to the sea and could boast of a fuller development of urban life. 
 Cirta the capital lay within this sphere, and Adherbal could con- 
 tinue to give justice from the throne of his fathers. But those who 
 held that the strength of a country depended mainly on its people 
 and its soil, believed that Jugurtha had received the better part. 
 The territories with which he was entrusted were those bordering 
 on Mauretania, rich in the products of the soil and teeming with 
 healthy human life.^ From the point of view of military resources 
 there could be no question as to which of the two kings was the 
 stronger. The peaceful character of Adherbal may have seemed a 
 justification for his peaceful sphere of rule ; but the original aggressor 
 was kept at his normal strength. Jugurtha ruled over the lands 
 in which the national spirit, of which he was himself the embodi- 
 ment, found its fullest and fiercest expression. He did not mean to 
 acquiesce for a moment in the settlement effected by the commis- 
 sion. No sooner had it completed its task and returned home, 
 than he began to devise a scheme which would lead to war between 
 
 I Sail. Jug. i6. 5. 
 
334f A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 114 
 
 the two principalities and the consequent annihilation of Adherbal. 
 He shrank at first from provoking the senate by a wanton attack 
 on the neighbouring kingdom which they had just created ; his 
 design was rather to draw Adherbal into hostilities which would 
 lead to a pitched battle, a certain victory, the disappearance of the 
 last of Micipsa's race and the union of the two crowns. With this 
 object he massed a considerable force on the boundary between the 
 two kingdoms and suddenly crossed the frontier. His mounted 
 raiders captured shepherds with their flocks, ravaged the fields of 
 the peasantry, looted and burned their homes ; then swept back 
 within their own borders.^ But Adherbal was not moved to re- 
 prisals. His circumstances no less than his temperament dictated 
 methods of peace : and, if he could not keep his crown by diplo- 
 macy, he must have regarded it as lost. The Roman people was a 
 better safeguard than his Numidian subjects, and it was necessary 
 to temporise with Jugurtha until the senate could be moved by a 
 strong appeal. Envoys were despatched to the court of the ag- 
 gressor to complain of the recent outrage ; they brought back an 
 impudent reply ; but Adherbal, steadfast in his pacific resolutions, 
 still remained quiescent. Jugurtha's plan had failed and he was in 
 no mood for further delay ; he held now, as he had done once 
 before, that his end could best be efi^cted by vigorous and decisive 
 action. The lapse of time could not improve his own position but 
 might strengthen that of Adherbal, and it was advisable that a new 
 Roman commission should witness an accomplished fact and make 
 the best of it rather than engage again in the settlement of a dis- 
 puted claim. It was no longer a predatory band but a large and 
 regular army that he now collected ; his present purpose was not a 
 foray but a war.^ He advanced into his rival's territory ravaging 
 its fields, harrying its cities and gathering booty as he went. At 
 every step the confidence of his own forces, the dismay of the enemy 
 increased. 
 
 Adherbal was at last convinced that he must appeal to the sword 
 for the security of his crown. A second flight to Rome would have 
 utterly discredited him in the eyes of his subjects, perhaps in those 
 of the Roman government itself ; yet, as his chief hope still lay in 
 Rome, he hurriedly despatched an embassy to the suzerain ci^y ' 
 
 1 Sail. Jug. 20. 4. 
 
 ^ Ibid. 20. 7 Itaque non uti antea cum praedatoria manu, sed magno exercitii 
 conparato bellum gerere coepit et aperte totius Numidiae imperium petere. 
 ' Ibid. 21. 3. 
 
112 B.C.] SIEGE OF CIRTA 335 
 
 while he himself prepared to take the field. With unwilling energy 
 he gathered his available forces and marched to oppose Jugurtha's 
 triumphant progress. The invading host had now skirted Cirta to 
 the west and was apparently attempting to cut off its communica- 
 tions with the sea. The disastrous results that would have followed 
 the success of this attempt, may have been the final motive that 
 spurred Adherbal to his appeal to arms ; and it was somewhere 
 within the fifty miles that intervened between the capital and its 
 port of Rusicade and at a spot nearer to the sea than to Cirta,i 
 that the opposing armies met. The day was already far spent 
 when Adherbal came into touch with his enemy: there was no 
 thought of a pitched battle in the gathering gloom, and either 
 party took up his quarters for the night. Towards the late 
 watches of the night, in the doubtful light of the early dawn, the 
 soldiers of Jugurtha crept up to the outposts of the enemy ; at a 
 given signal they rushed on the camp and carried it by storm. 
 Adherbal's soldiers, heavy with sleep and groping for their arms, 
 were routed or slain ; the prince himself sprang on his horse and 
 with a handful of his knights sped for safety to the walls of Cirta, 
 Jugurtha's troops in hot pursuit. They had almost closed on the 
 fugitive before the walls were reached ; but the race had been 
 watched from the battlements, and, as the flying Adherbal passed 
 the gates, the walls were manned by a volunteer body of Italian 
 merchants who kept the pursuing Numidians at bay.^ It was the 
 merchant class that had most to fear from the cruelty and cupidity 
 of the nomad hordes that now beat against the fortress, and during 
 the siege that followed they controlled the course of events far more 
 effectually than the unhappy king whom they had for the moment 
 saved from destruction. 
 
 Jugurtha's plans were foiled ; Adherbal had escaped, and there 
 lay before him the irksome prospect of a siege, of probable interfer- 
 ence from Rome and, it might be, of the necessity of openly defying 
 the senate's commands. But it was now too late to draw back, and 
 he set himself vigorously to the work of reducing Cirta by assault 
 or famine. The task must have been an arduous one. The town 
 formed one of the strongest positions for defence that could be 
 
 ' Sallust says (yug. 21. 2) : Haud longe a mari prope Cirtam oppidum utriusque 
 exercitus consedit. He apparently underestimates the distance of Cirta from the 
 sea. 
 
 ' Ibid. 21. 2 Ni multitudo togatorum fuisset, quae Numidas insequentis moenibus 
 prohibuit, uno die inter duos rages coeptum atque pattatum bellum foret. 
 
336 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 112 
 
 found in the ancient world. It was built on an isolated cube of 
 rock that towered above the vast cultivated tracts of the surround- 
 ing plain. At its eastern extremity the precipice made a sheer drop 
 of six hundred feet, and was perhaps quite inaccessible on this side, 
 although it threw out spurs, whether natural or of artificial construc- 
 tion, which formed a difficult and easily defensible communication 
 with the lower land around. Its natural bastions were completed 
 by a natural moat, for the river Ampsaga (the Wad Remel) almost 
 encircled the town, and on the eastern side its deep and rushing 
 waters could only be crossed by a ledge of rock, through which it 
 bored a subterranean channel and over which some kind of bridge 
 or causeway had probably been formed.^ The natural and easy 
 mode of approach to the city was to be found in the south-west, 
 where a neck of land of half a furlong's breadth led up to the 
 principal gate. 
 
 In spite of the formidable difficulties of the task Jugurtha at- 
 tempted an assault, for it was of the utmost importance that he 
 should possess the person of Adherbal before interference was felt 
 from Rome. Mantlets, turrets and all the engines of siege warfare 
 were vigorously employed to carry the town by storm ; ^ but the 
 stout walls baffled every effijrt, and Jugurtha was forced to face as 
 best he might another Roman embassy which Adherbal's protests 
 had brought to African soil. The senate, when it had learnt the 
 news of the renewed outbreak of the war, was as unwilling as ever 
 to intervene as a third partner in a three-sided conflict. To play 
 the part of the policeman as well as of the judge was no element in 
 Roman policy ; the very essence of a protectorate was that it should 
 take care of itself; were intervention necessary, it should be decisive, 
 and it would be a lengthy task and an arduous strain to gather and 
 transport to Africa a force sufficient to overawe Jugurtha. The 
 easy device of a new commission was therefore adopted. If its sug- 
 gestions were obeyed, all would be well ; if they were neglected, 
 matters could not be much worse than they were at present. As 
 the new commissioners had merely to take a message and were 
 credited with no discretionary power, it was thought unnecessary to 
 burden the higher magnates of the State with the unenviable 
 
 ' The bridge described by Shaw, constructed on one of the natural arches which 
 connect the two sides of the river bed and presenting two ranges of superposed 
 arcades, is no longer in existence. This bridge attached the south-eastern angle 
 of the town to the heights of Mansoura. See Tissot Geographie comparee ii. p. 393. 
 
 = Sail. yug. 21. 3. 
 
U2 B.C.] INTERVENTION OF ROME 337 
 
 task, or to expose them to the undignified predicament of finding 
 their representations flouted by a rebel who might have eventually 
 to be recognised as a king. A chance was given to younger mem- 
 bers of the senatorial order, and the three who landed in Africa 
 were branded by the hostile criticism that was soon to find utter- 
 ance and in the poverty of its indictment to catch at every straw, 
 as lacking the age and dignity demanded by the mission — qualities 
 which, had they been present, would probably have failed to make 
 the least impression on Jugurtha's fixed resolve. The commissioners 
 were to approach both the kings and to bring to their notice the 
 will and resolution of the Roman senate and people, which were to 
 the effect that hostilities should be suspended and that the ques- 
 tions at issue between the rivals should be submitted to peaceful 
 arbitration. This conduct the senate recommended as the only 
 one worthy of its royal clients and of itself.^ 
 
 The speed of the envoys was accelerated by the impression that 
 they might find but one king to be the recipient of their message. 
 On the eve of their departure the news of the decisive battle and 
 the siege of Cirta had reached their ears. Haste was imperative, if 
 they were to retain their position as envoys, for the next despatch 
 might bring news of Adherbal's death. The actual news received 
 fell short of the truth,^ and was perhaps still further softened for the 
 public ear ; the fact that the envoys had sailed was itself an official 
 indication that all hope had not been abandoned. If they cherished 
 a similar illusion themselves, it must almost have vanished before 
 the sight that met their eyes in Numidia. They saw a closely be- 
 leaguered town in which one of the ftings, who were to be the 
 recipients of their message, was so closely hemmed that access to him 
 was impossible.' The other, without abating one jot of his mili- 
 tary preparations, met them with an answer as uncompromising as 
 it was courteous. Jugurtha held nothing more precious than the 
 authority of the senate ; from his youth up he had striven to meet 
 the approbation of the good ; it was by merit not by artifice, that 
 he had gained the favour of Scipio ; it was desert that had won him 
 a place amongst Micipsa's children and a share in the Numidian 
 
 ' Sail. yug. 21. 4 Postquam senatus de bello eorum accepit, tres adulescentea 
 in Africam legantur, qui ambos reges adeant, senatus populique Romani verbis 
 nuntient velle et censere eos ab armis discedere, de controvorsiis suis jure potius 
 quam bello disceptare : ita seque illisque dignum esse. 
 
 * Is rumor clemens erat (Ibid. 22. i). 
 
 ^ Adherbalis adpellandi copia non fuit {Ibid. 22. 5). 
 
338 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 112 
 
 crown. But qualities carry their responsibilities ; the very distinc- 
 tion of his services made it the more incumbent on him to avenge 
 a wrong. Adherbal had treacherously plotted against his life; 
 the crime had been revealed and he had but taken steps to forestall 
 it; the Roman people would not be acting justly or honourably, if 
 they hindered him from taking such steps in his own defence as 
 were the common right of all men.^ He would soon send envoys to 
 Rome to deal with the whole question in dispute. 
 
 This answer showed the Roman commissioners the utter help- 
 lessness of their position. Their presence in Jugurtha's camp 
 within sight of a city in which a client king and a number of their 
 own citizens were imprisoned, was itself a stigma on the name of 
 Rome. If they had prayed to see Adherbal, the request must have 
 been refused ; to prolong the negotiations was to court further in- 
 sult, and they set their faces once more for Rome after faithfully 
 performing the important mission of repeating a message of the 
 senate with verbal correctness. Jugurtha granted them the courtesy 
 of not renewing his active operations until he thought that they 
 had quitted Africa. Then, despairing of carrying the town by 
 assault, he settled to the work of a regular siege. The nature of 
 the ground must have made a complete investment impossible ; but 
 it also rendered it unnecessary. The cliiFs and the river bed made 
 escape as difficult as attack. On some sides it was but necessary to 
 maintain a strenuous watch on every possible egress ; on others lines 
 of circumvallation, with ramparts and ditches, kept the beleaguered 
 within their walls. Siege-towers were raised to mate the height of 
 the fortifications which they threatened, and manned with garrisons 
 to harry the town and repel all efforts of its citizens to escape. The 
 blockade was varied by a series of surprises, of sudden assaults by 
 day or night ; no method of force or fraud was left untried ; the 
 loyalty of the defenders who appeared on the walls was assailed by 
 threats or promises; the assailants were strenuously exhorted to 
 effect a speedy entry. 
 
 It would seem that Cirta was ill-provided with supplies.^ Ad- 
 herbal, who had made it the basis of his attack and must have fore- 
 seen the probability of his defeat, should have seen that it was well 
 provisioned ; and the vast cisterns and granaries cut in the solid 
 
 ' Si ab jure gentium sese prohibuerit (Sail. Jug. 22. 4). 
 
 ^ lUd. 23. ^ Adherbal . , . intellegit . . . penuria rerum necessariarum bellum 
 trahi non posse. 
 
112 B.C.] APPEAL OF ADHERBAL 339 
 
 rock, that were in later times to be found within the city, should have 
 supplied water and food sufficient to prolong the siege to a degree 
 that might have tried the senate's patience as sorely as Jugurtha's. 
 But neither the king nor his advisers were adepts in the art of war ; 
 it must have been difficult to regulate the distribution of provisions 
 amidst the trading classes, of unsettled habits and mixed national- 
 ities, that were crowded within the walls; discontent could not be 
 restrained by discipline and might at any moment be a motive to 
 surrender. The imprisoned king saw no prospect of a prolongation 
 of the war that could secure even his personal safety ; no help could 
 be looked for from without and a ruthless enemy was battering at 
 his gates. His only hope, a faint one, lay in a last appeal to Rome ; 
 but the invader's lines were drawn so close that even a chance of 
 communicating with the protecting city seemed denied. At length, 
 by urgent appeals to pity and to avarice, he induced two of the 
 comrades who had joined his flight from the field of battle, to risk 
 the venture of penetrating the enemy's lines and reaching the sea.^ 
 The venture, which was made by night, succeeded ; the two bold 
 messengers stole through the enclosing fortifications, rapidly made 
 for the nearest port, and thence took ship to Rome. Within a few 
 days they were in the presence of the senate,^ and the despairing 
 cry of Adherbal was being read to an assembly, to whom it could 
 convey no new knowledge and on whom it could lay no added bur- 
 den of perplexity. But emotion, although it cannot teach, may 
 focus thought and clarify the promptings of interest. To many a 
 loose thinker Adherbal's missive may have been the first revelation, 
 not only of the shame, but of the possible danger of the situation. 
 The facts were too well known to require detailed treatment. It 
 was sufiicient to remind the senate that for five months a friend 
 and ally of the Roman people had been blockaded in his own cap- 
 ital ; his choice was merely one between death by the sword and 
 death by famine. Adherbal no longer asked for his kingdom ; nay, 
 he barely ventured to ask for his life ; but he deprecated a death 
 by torture — a fate that would most certainly be his if he fell into 
 the hands of his implacable foe. The appeal to interest was inter- 
 woven with that made to pity and to honour. What were Jugurtha's 
 ultimate motives .'' When he had consummated his crimes and ab- 
 sorbed the whole of Numidia, did he mean to remain a peaceful 
 
 1 Sail. yug. 23. 2. = Ibid. 24. 
 
340 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. lis 
 
 client-king, a faithful vassal of Rome ? His fidelity and obedience 
 might be measured by the treatment which he had already accorded 
 to the mandate and the envoys of the senate. The power of Rome 
 in her African possessions was at stake ; and the majesty of the 
 empire was appealed to no less than the sense of friendship, loyalty, 
 and gratitude, as a ground for instant assistance which might yet 
 save the suppliant from a terrible and degrading end. 
 
 The impression produced by this appeal was seen in the bolder 
 attitude adopted by that section of the senate which had from the 
 first regarded Jugurtha as a criminal at large, and had never ap- 
 proved the policy of leaving Numidia to settle its own affairs. 
 Voices were heard advocating the immediate despatch of an army 
 to Africa, the speedy succour of Adherbal, the consideration of an 
 adequate punishment for the contumacy of Jugurtha in not obey- 
 ing the express commands of Rome.^ But the usual protests were 
 heard from the other side, protests which were interpreted as a proof 
 of the utter corruption of those who uttered them,^ but which were 
 doubtless veiled in the decent language, and may in some cases 
 have been animated by the genuine spirit, of the cautious imperi- 
 alist who prefers a crime to a blunder. The conflict of opinion 
 resulted in the usual compromise. A new commission was to be 
 despatched with a more strongly worded message from the senate ; 
 but, as rumour had apparently been busy with the adventures of 
 the " three young men " whom Jugurtha had turned back, it was 
 deemed advisable to select the present envoys from men whose age, 
 birth and ample honours might give weight to a mission that was 
 meant to avert a war.' The solemnity of the occasion was attested, 
 and some feeling of assurance may have been created, by the fact 
 that there figured amongst the commissioners no less a person 
 than the chief of the senate Marcus Aemilius Scaurus, beyond all 
 question the foremost man of Rome,* the highest embodiment of 
 patrician dignity and astute diplomacy. The pressing appeal of 
 Adherbal's envoys, the ugly rumours which were circulating in 
 Rome, urged the commissioners to unwonted activity. Within three 
 days they were on board, and after a short interval had landed at 
 
 1 Sail. Jug. 25. I. 
 
 ^ Ihid. 25. 3 Ita bonum publicum, ut in plerisque negotiis solet, privata gratia 
 devictum. 
 
 * Ibid. 25. 4 Legantur tamen in Africam majores natu nobiles, amplis honoribua 
 usi. 
 
 * Cujus , . . nutu prope terrarum orbis regebatur (Cic. fro Font, 7. 24). 
 
112 B.C.] RENEWED INTERVENTION OF ROME 341 
 
 Utica in the African province. The experience of the former mis- 
 sion had taught them that their dignity might be utterly lost if 
 they quitted the territory of the Roman domain. They did not 
 deign to set foot in Numidia, but sent a message to Jugurtha in- 
 forming him that they had a mandate from the senate and ordering 
 him to come with all speed to the Roman province. 
 
 Jugurtha was for the moment torn by conflicting resolutions. 
 The very audacity of his acts had been tempered and in part 
 directed by a secret fear of Rome. Whether in any moments of 
 ambitious imagination he had dreamed of throwing off" the protec- 
 torate and asserting the unlimited independence of the Numidian 
 kingdom, must remain uncertain ; but in any case that consumma- 
 tion must belong to the end, not to the intermediate stage, of his pre- 
 sent enterprise. His immediate plan had been to win or purchase 
 recognition of an accomplished fact from the somnolence, caution or 
 corruption of the government ; and here -was intervention assuming 
 a more formidable shape while the fact was but half accomplished 
 and he himself was but playing the part of the rebel, not of the 
 king. The dignity of the commissioners, and the peremptory nature 
 of their demand, seemed to show that negotiations with Rome were 
 losing their character of a conventional game and assuming a more 
 serious aspect. It is possible that Jugurtha did not know the full 
 extent of the danger which he was running ; it is possible that, like 
 so many other potentates who had relations with the imperial city, 
 he made the mistake of imagining that the senate was in the fullest 
 sense the government of Rome, and had no cognisance of the 
 subtle forces whose equilibrium was expressed in a formal control by 
 the nobility ; but even what he saw was sufficient to alarm him 
 and to lead him, in a moment of panic or prudence, to think of the 
 possibility of obeying the commission. At the next moment the 
 new man, which the deliberate but almost frenzied pursuit of a 
 single object had made of Jugurtha, was fully reasserted.^ But his 
 passion was not blind ; his recklessness still veiled a plan ; his one 
 absorbing desire was to see Adherbal in his hands before he should 
 himself be forced to meet the envoys. He gave orders for his whole 
 force to encircle the walls of Cirta ; a simultaneous assault was 
 directed against every vulnerable point ; the attention of the de- 
 
 ' Sail. Jug. 25. 6 Primo comraotus metu atque lubidine divorsus agitabatur. 
 Timebat iram senatus, ni paruisset legatis: porro animus cupidine caecus ad in- 
 ceptum scelus rapiebatur. 
 
A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 112 
 
 fenders was to be distracted by the ubiquitous nature of the 
 attack ; a failure of vigilance at any point might give him the 
 desired entry by force or fraud. But nothing came of the enter- 
 prise ; the assailants were beaten back, and Jugurtha had another 
 moment for cool reflection. He soon decided that further delay 
 would not strengthen his position. The name of Scaurus weighed 
 heavily on his mind.^ He was an untried element with respect to 
 the details of the Numidian affair ; but all that Jugurtha knew of 
 him — his influence with the senate, his uncompromising respect- 
 ability, his earlier attitude on the question — inspired a feeling of 
 fear. Obedience to the demand which the commissioners had made 
 for his presence might be the wiser course ; whatever the result of 
 the interview, such obedience might prolong the period of negotia- 
 tion and delay armed intervention until his own great object was 
 fulfilled. With a few of his knights Jugurtha crossed into the 
 Roman province and presented himself before the commissioners. 
 We have no record of the discussion which ensued. The senate's 
 message was almost an ultimatum ; it threatened extreme measures 
 if Jugurtha did not desist from the siege of Cirta ; but the peremp- 
 tory nature of the missive did not prevent close and lengthy discus- 
 sions between the envoys and the king. The plausible personality 
 of Jugurtha may have told in his favour and may have led to the 
 hopes of a compromise ; for it is not probable that he ventured on 
 a summary rejection of their orders or advice. But the commis- 
 sioners could merely threaten or advise ; they had no power to 
 wring promises from the king or to keep him to them when they 
 were made. Thus when, at the close of the debates, Jugurtha re- 
 turned to Numidia and the envoys embarked at Utica, it was felt 
 on all sides that nothing had been accomplished.^ The commis- 
 sioners may have believed that they had made Jugurtha sensible 
 of his true relations to Rome ; they had perhaps threatened open 
 war as the result of disobedience ; but they had neither checked his 
 progress nor stayed his hand ; and the taint with which all dealings 
 with the wealthy potentate infected his environment, clung even to 
 this select body of distinguished men. 
 
 The immediate effect of the fruitless negotiations was the dis- 
 aster which every one must have foreseen. Cirta and her king had 
 been utterly betrayed |by their protectress ; and when the news of 
 
 » Sail. yug. 25. 10. 2 Ibid. 25. II. 
 
112 B.C.] DEATH OF ADHERBAL 343 
 
 the departure of the envoys and the return of Jugurtha penetrated 
 within the walls, despair of further resistance gave substance to the 
 hope of the possibihty of surrender on tolerable terms. The hope 
 was never present to the mind of Adherbal ; he knew his enemy too 
 well. Nor could it have been entertained in a very lively form by 
 the king's Numidian councillors and subjects. But the Numidian 
 was not the strongest element in Cirta. There the merchant class 
 held sway. In the defence of their property and commerce, the 
 organised business and the homes which they had established in the 
 civilised state, they had taken the lead in repelling the hordes of 
 Western Numidians which Jugurtha led ; and amongst the merchant 
 class those of Italian race had been the most active and efficient in 
 repelling the assaults of the besiegers. To these men the choice 
 was not between famine and the sword ; but merely between famine 
 and the loss of property or comfort. For what Roman or Italian 
 could doubt that the most perfect security for his life and person 
 was still implicit in the magic name of Rome .'' Confident in their 
 safety they advised Adherbal to hand over the town to Jugurtha ; 
 the only condition which he needed to make was the preservation 
 of his own life and that of the besieged ; all else was of less import- 
 ance, for their future fortunes rested not with Jugurtha but with 
 the senate.^ It is questionable whether the Italians were really 
 inspired with this blind confidence in the senate's power to restore 
 as well as to save ; even their ability to save was more than doubt- 
 ful to Adherbal ; still more worthless was a promise made by his 
 enemy. The unhappy king would have preferred the most des- 
 perate resistance to a trust in Jugurtha's honour ; but the advice 
 of the Italians was equivalent to a command ; and a gleam of hope, 
 sufficient at least to prevent him from taking his own life, may have 
 buoyed him up when he yielded to their wishes and made the 
 formal surrender. The hope, if it existed, was immediately dis- 
 pelled. Adherbal was put to death with cruel tortures.^ The 
 Italians then had their proof of the present value of the majesty 
 of the name of Rome. Their calculations had been vitiated by 
 one fatal blunder. They forgot that they were letting into their 
 stronghold an exasperated people drawn from the rudest parts of 
 
 ' Sail. Jug. 26. I Italici, quorum virtute moenia defensabantur, confisi deditione 
 facta propter magnitudinem populi Romani inviolatos sese fore, Adherbali suadent 
 uti seque et oppidum Jugurthae tradat, tan turn ab eo vitam paciscatur : de ceteris 
 senatui curae fore. 
 
 ^ Ibid. 26. 3 Jugurtha in primis Adherbalem excruciatum necat. 
 
344 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 112 
 
 Numidia — a people to whom the name of Rome was as nothing, to 
 whom the name of merchant or foreigner was contemptible and 
 hateful. As the surging crowd of Jugurtha's soldiery swept over 
 the doomed city, massacring every Numidian of adult age, the 
 claim of nationality made by the protesting merchants was not un- 
 naturally met by a thrust from the sword. If even the assailants 
 could distinguish them in the frenzy of victory, they knew them for 
 men who had occupied the fighting line ; and this fact was alone 
 sufficient to doom them to destruction. Jugurtha may also have 
 made his blunder. Unless we suppose that his penetrating mind 
 had been suddenly clouded by the senseless rage which prompts the 
 half-savage man to a momentary act of demoniacal folly, he could 
 never have willed the slaughter of the Roman and Italian merchants.^ 
 If he willed it in cold blood, he was consciously making war on 
 Rome and declaring the independence of Numidia. For, even with 
 his limited knowledge of the balance of interests in the capital, he 
 must have seen that the act was inexpiable. His true policy, now 
 as before, was not to cross swords with Rome, but merely to wring 
 from her indifference a recognition of a purely national crime. His 
 wits had failed him if he had ordered a deed which put indifl^erence 
 and recognition out of the question. It is probable that he did not 
 calculate on the fury of his troops ; it is possible that he had ceased 
 to lead and was a mere unit swept along in the avalanche which 
 sated its wrath at the prolonged resistance, and avenged the real or 
 fancied crimes committed by the merchant class. 
 
 The massacre of the merchants caused a complete change in the 
 attitude with which Numidian events were viewed at Rome. It cut 
 the commercial classes to the quick, and this third party which 
 moulded the policy of Rome began closing up its ranks. The 
 balance of power on which the nobility had rested its presidency since 
 the fall of Caius Gracchus, began to be disturbed. It was possible 
 again for a leader of the people to make his voice heard ; not, how- 
 ever, because he was the leader of the people, but because he was the 
 head of a coalition. The man of the hour was Caius Memmius, who 
 was tribune elect for the following year. He was an orator, vehe- 
 ment rather than eloquent, of a mordant utterance, and famed in the 
 
 1 Sallust (/. c.) represents him as the author of this massacre ; (Jugurtha) omnis 
 puberes Numidas atque negotiatores promiscue, uti quisque armatus obvius fuerat, 
 interficit. But the attribution may be due to the brevity of the narrative. The 
 leader of a murderous host may easily be credited with the outrages which it 
 commits. 
 
112 B.C.] WAR WITH JUGURTHA DECLARED 345 
 
 courts for his power of attack .^ His critical temperament and keen 
 eye for abuses had already led him to join the sparse ranks of poli- 
 ticians who tried still to keep alive the healthy flame of discontent, 
 and to utter an occasional protest against the manner in which the 
 nobility exercised their trust.^ His influence must have been in- 
 creased by the growing suspicion of the last few years and the 
 scandal that fed on tales of bribery in high places ; it was assured 
 by the latest news which, through the illogical process of reasoning 
 out of which great causes grow, seemed to make rumour a certainty 
 and to justify suspicion by the increased numbers and respectability 
 of the suspecting. A pretext for action was found in the shifty and 
 dilatory proceedings of the senate. Even the latest phase of the 
 Numidian affair was not powerful or horrible enough to crush all 
 attempts at a temporising policy.* Men were still found to inter- 
 rupt the course of a debate which promised to issue in some strong 
 and speedy resolution, by raising counter-motions which the great 
 names of the movers forced on the attention of the house ; every ar- 
 tifice which influence could command was employed to dull the pain 
 of a wounded self-respect ; and when this method failed, idle re- 
 crimination took the place of argument as a means of consuming 
 the time for action and passing the point at which anger would 
 have cooled into indifference, or at least into an emotion not 
 stronger than regret. It was plain that the stimulus must be sup- 
 plied from without ; and Memmius provided it by going straight to 
 the people and embodying their floating suspicions in a bald and 
 uncompromising form. He told them * that the prolonged pro- 
 ceedings in the senate meant simply that the crime of Jugurtha 
 ^was likely to be condoned through the influence of a few ardent 
 partisans of the king ; and it is probable that he dealt frankly and 
 in the true Roman manner with the motives for this partisanship. 
 The pressure was effectual in bringing to a head the deliberations 
 of the senate. The council as a whole did not need conversion on 
 the main question at issue, for most of its members must have felt 
 that it had exhausted the resources of peaceful diplomacy, and it 
 
 1 Cic. Brut. 36. 136 Turn etiam C. L. Memmii fuerunt oratores mediocres, 
 accusatores acres atque acerbi. Itaque in judicium capitis multos vocaverunt, pro 
 reis non saepe dixerunt. For his mordant style see Cic. de Orat. ii. 59. 240. The 
 lofty opinion which he was supposed to hold of himself is illustrated in Cic. de 
 Orat. ii. 66. 267 Velut tu, Crasse, in contione " ita sibi ipsum magnum videri 
 Memmium ut in forum descendens caput ad fornicem Fabianum demitteret". 
 
 ' He was already " vir acer et infestus potentiae nobilitatis " (Sail. fug. 27. 2). 
 
 ' Ibid. 27. I. * Ibid. 27. 2. 
 
346 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 112 
 
 showed its characteristic aversion to the provocation of a constitu- 
 tional crisis, which might easily arise if the people chose to declare 
 war on the motion of a magistrate without waiting for the advice 
 of the fathers; while the obstructive minority may have been 
 alarmed by the distant vision of a trial before the Assembly or be- 
 fore a commission of inquiry composed of judges taken from the 
 angry Equites. The senate took the lead in a formal declaration 
 of war ; Numidia was named as one of the provinces which were to 
 be assigned to the future consuls in accordance with the provisions 
 of the Sempronian law. The choice of the people fell on Publius 
 Scipio Nasica and Lucius Calpurnius Bestia as consuls for the fol- 
 lowing year.i The lot assigned the home government and the 
 guardianship of Italy to Nasica, while Bestia gained the command 
 in the impending war. Military preparations were pushed on with 
 all haste ; an army was' levied for service in Africa ; pay and supplies 
 were voted on an adequate scale. 
 
 The news is said to have surprised Jugurtha.^ Perhaps earlier 
 messages of a more cheerful import had reached him from Rome 
 during the days when successful obstruction seemed to be achieving 
 its end, and had dulled the fears which the massacre of Cirta must 
 have aroused even in a mind so familiar with the acquiescent policy , 
 of the senate. Yet even now he did not lose heart, nor did his 
 courage take the form, prevalent amongst the lower types of mind, 
 of a mere reliance on brute force, on the resources of that Numidia 
 of which he was now the undisputed lord. With a persistence born 
 of successful experience he still attempted the methods of diplomacy 
 — methods which prove a lack of insight only in the sense that 
 Rome was an impossible sphere for their present exercise. The 
 king had not gauged the situation in the capital ; but subsequent 
 events proved that he still possessed a correct estimate of the real 
 inclinations of the men who were chiefly responsible for Roman 
 policy. The Numidian envoy was no less a person than the king's 
 own son, and he was supported by two trusty counsellors of Jugurtha.' 
 As was usual in the case of a diplomatic mission arriving from a coun- 
 try which had no treaty relations, or was actually in a st4te of war, 
 
 ^ Sail. yiig. 27. 3 Lege Sempronia provinciae futuris consulibus Numidia atque 
 Italia decretae. Consules declarati P. Scipio Nasica, L. Bestia : Calpurnio Numidia, 
 Scipioni Italia obvenit. 
 
 " Jugurtha, contra spem nuntio accepto, quippe cui Romae omnia venum ire in 
 animo haeserat (Ibid. 28. i). 
 
 = Ibid. 
 
Ill B.C.] PREPARATIONS FOR WAR 347 
 
 with Rome, the envoys were not permitted to pass the gates until 
 the will of the senate was known. An excellent opportunity was 
 given for proving the conversion of the senate. When the consul 
 Bestia put the question " Is it the pleasure of the house that the 
 envoys of Jugurtha be received within the walls .'' " the firm answer 
 was returned that " Unless these envoys had come to surrender 
 Numidia and its king to the absolute discretion of the Roman 
 people, they must cross the borders of Italy within ten days".^ 
 The consul had this message conveyed to the prince, and he 
 and his colleagues returned from their fruitless mission. 
 
 Bestia meanwhile was consumed with military zeal. His army 
 was ready, his staiF was chosen, and he was evidently bent on an 
 earnest prosecution of the war. He was in many respects as fit a 
 man as could have been selected for the task. His powers of phy- 
 sical endurance and the vigour of his intellect had already been 
 tested in war ; he possessed the resolution and the foresight of a true 
 general. But the canker of the age was supposed to have infected 
 Bestia and neutralised his splendid qualities.^ The proof that he 
 allowed greed to dominate his public conduct is indeed lacking ; 
 but he would have departed widely from the spirit of his time if he 
 had allowed no thought of private gain to add its quota to the joy 
 of the soldier who finds himself for the first time in the untrammelled 
 conduct of a war. To the commanders of the age foreign service 
 was as a matter of course a source of profit as well as a sphere of 
 duty or of glory. To Bestia it was also to be a sphere for diplo- 
 macy ; and diplomacy and profit present an awkward combination, 
 which gives room for much misinterpretation. Although the war 
 was in some sense a concession to outside influences, the consul did not 
 represent the spirit to which the senate had yielded. Nine years 
 earlier he had served the cause of the nobility by effecting the re- 
 call of Popillius from exile,^ and was now a member of that inner 
 circle of the government whose cautious manipulation of foreign 
 affairs was veiled in a secrecy which might easily rouse the suspicion, 
 because it did not appeal to the intelligence, of the masses. How 
 vital a part diplomacy was to play in the coming war, was shown 
 by Bestia's selection of his staff. It was practically a committee of 
 
 1 Sail. Jug. 28. 2. 
 
 ^ In consule nostro multae bonaeque artes animi et corporis erant, quas omnis 
 avaritia praepediebat : patiens laboruin, acri ingenio, satis providens, belli baud 
 ignarus, fiimissumus contra pericula et insidias {Ihid. 28, 5). 
 
 3 P. 279. 
 
348 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. Ill 
 
 the inner ring of governing nobles,' and the importance attached to 
 the purely political aspect of the African war was proved by the 
 fact that Scaurus himself deigned to occupy a position amongst the 
 legates of the commander. It was a difficult task which Bestia and 
 his assistants had to perform. They were to carry out the mandate 
 of the people and pursue Jugurtha as a criminal ; they were to fol- 
 low out their own conviction as to the best means of saving Rome 
 from a prolonged and burdensome war with a whole nation — a con- 
 viction which might force them to recognise Jugurtha as a king. 
 To avenge honour and at the same time to secure peace was, in the 
 present condition of the public mind, an almost impossible task. 
 Its gravity was increased by the fact that, through the method of 
 selection employed for composing the general's council, a certain 
 section of the nobility, already marked out for suspicion, would be 
 held wholly responsible for its failure. It was a gravity that was 
 probably undervalued by the leaders of the expedition, who could 
 scarcely have looked forward to the day when it might be said 
 that Bestia had selected his legates with a view of hiding the 
 misdeeds which he meant to commit under the authority of their 
 names.'' 
 
 When the time for departure had arrived, the legions were 
 marched through Italy to Rhegium, were shipped thence to Sicily 
 and from Sicily were transferred to the African province. This 
 was to be Bestia's basis of operations ; and when he had gathered ^ 
 adequate supplies and organised his lines of communication, he 
 entered Numidia. His march was from a superficial point of view 
 a complete success ; large numbers of prisoners were taken and 
 several cities were carried by assault.^ But the nature of the war in 
 hand was soon made painfully manifest. It was a war with a nation, 
 not a mere hunting expedition for the purpose of tracking down 
 Jugurtha. The latter object could be successfully accomplished only 
 if some assistance were secured from friendly portions of Numidia 
 or from neighbouring powers. But there was no friendly portion 
 of Numidia. The mercantile class had been wiped out, and though 
 the Romans seem to have regained possession of Cirta at an early 
 
 1 Sail. Jug. 28. 4 Calpurnius parato exercitu legat sibi homines nobilis, 
 factiosos, quorum auctoritate quae deliquisset munita fore sperabat. 
 
 2 Sail. I.e. 
 
 ' The only record of this campaign is contained in the few words of Sallust 
 {Ihid. 28. 7) Acriter Numidiani ingressus est multosque mortalis et urbis aliquot 
 pugnando cepit. 
 
Ill B.C.] BOCCHUS OF MAURETANIA 349 
 
 period of the war,i it is not likely that it ever resumed the indus- 
 trial life, which might have supplied money and provisions, if not 
 men ; while the position of the town renderedi it useless as a basis 
 of operations for expeditions into that western portion of Numidia, 
 from which the chief military strength of Jugurtha was drawn. In 
 these regions a possible ally was to be found in Bocchus King 
 of Mauretania ; but his recent overtures to Rome had been de- 
 liberately rejected by the senate. Nothing but the name of this 
 great King of the Moors, who ruled over the territory stretch- 
 ing from the Muluccha to Tingis, had hitherto been known to 
 the Roman people ; even the proximity of a portion of his king- 
 dom to the coast of Spain had brought him into no relations, either 
 friendly or hostile, to the imperial government.^ Bocchus had 
 secured peace with his eastern neighbour by giving his daughter 
 in marriage to Jugurtha ; but he never allowed this family connec- 
 tion to disturb his ideas of political convenience and, as soon as 
 he heard that war had been declared against Jugurtha, he sent an 
 embassy to Rome praying for a treaty with the Roman people and 
 a recognition as one of the friends of the Republic.^ This conduct 
 may have been due to the belief that a victory of the Romans 
 over Jugurtha would entail the destruction of the Numidian 
 monarchy and the reduction of at least a portion of the territory 
 to the condition of a province. In this case Mauretania would 
 itself be the frontier kingdom, playing the part now taken by 
 Numidia ; and Bocchus may have wished to have some claim on 
 Rome before his eastern frontier was bordered, as his northern was 
 commanded, by a Roman province. He may even have hoped to 
 benefit by the spoils of war, as Masinissa had once benefited by 
 
 1 Possibly not at this time, but the date of its recovery is unknown. The town 
 is in the hands of Metellus during the closing months of his campaign (Sail. Jug. 
 8i. 2). Cf. p. 431. 
 
 " Sail. Jug. ig. 7 Mauris omnibus rex Bocchus imperitabat, praeter nomen 
 cetera ignarus populi Romani, itemque nobis neque bello neque pace antea cognitus. 
 Practically nothing is known of the predecessors of this king. Livy (xxix. 30) 
 mentions an earlier Baga of Mauretania, and perhaps this name is identical with 
 that of Bocchus or Biiyoj. See Biereye Res Numidarum et Maurorum. For the 
 earlier history of Mauretania see also Gobel Die Westkuste Afrikas im Altertum. 
 The boundaries of the kingdom were the Atlantic and the Muluccha on the west 
 and east respectively (Liv. xxiv. 49, xxi. 22 ; Sail. Jug. no). The southern boundary 
 naturally shifted. At times the Mauretanian kings ruled over some of the Gaetulian 
 tribes, and Strabo (ii. 3. 4) makes the kingdom extend at one time to tribes akin to 
 the Aethiopians — presumably to the Atlas range. Elsewhere (xvii. 3. 2) he speaks 
 of it as extending over the Rif to the Gaetulians. See Gobel op cit. pp. 79-82. 
 
 ^ Ibid. 80. 4 Bocchus initio hujusce belli legates Romam miserat foedus et 
 amicitiam petitum. 
 
350 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. ill 
 
 those which fell from Syphax and from Carthage, and to increase 
 his territories at the expense of his son-in-law. There can be no 
 better proof of the real intentions of the government as regards 
 Numidia, even after war had been declared, than the senate's rejec- 
 tion of the offer made by Bocchus. His aid would be invaluable 
 from a strategic point of view, if the aim of the expedition were to 
 make Numidia a province or even to crush Jugurtha. But the 
 most constant maxim of senatorial policy was to avoid an extension 
 of the frontiers, and this principle was accompanied by a strong 
 objection to enter into close relations with any power that was not 
 a frontier state. Such relations might involve awkward obligations, 
 and were inconsistent with the policy which devolved the whole 
 obligation for frontier defence and frontier relations on a friendly 
 client prince. Whether the maintenance of the traditional scheme 
 of administration in Africa demanded the renewed recognition of 
 Jugurtha. as King of Numidia, was a subordinate question ; its 
 answer depended entirely on the possibility of the Numidians being 
 induced to accept any other monarch. 
 
 It must have required but a brief experience of the war to con- 
 vince Bestia and his council that a Numidian kingdom without the 
 recognition of Jugurtha as king was almost unthinkable, unless 
 Rome was prepared to enter on an arduous and harassing war for 
 the piecemeal conquest of the land or (a task equally difficult) 
 for the purpose of securing the person of an elusive monarch, who 
 could take every advantage of the natural difficulties of his country 
 and could find a refuge and ready assistance in every part of his 
 dominions. The tentative approaches of Jugurtha, who negotiated 
 while he fought, were therefore admitted both by the consul and 
 by Scaurus, who inevitably dominated the diplomatic relations of 
 the war. That Jugurtha sent money as well as proposals at the 
 hands of his envoys, was a fact subsequently approved by a Roman 
 court of law, and deserves such credence as can be attached to a 
 verdict which was the final phase of a political agitation. That 
 Bestia was blinded by avarice and lost all sense of his own and his 
 country's honour, that Scaurus's sense of respectability and distrust 
 of Jugurtha went down before the golden promises of the king,' 
 were beliefs widely held, and perhaps universally, professed, by the 
 
 ' Sail. Jug. 29. 2 Scaurus . . . tametsi a principio, plerisque ex factione ejus 
 conruptis, acerrume regem inpugnaverat, tamen magnitudine pecuniae a bono 
 honestoque in pravom abstractus est. 
 
Ill B.C.] BESTIA IN NUMIDIA 351 
 
 democrats who were soon thundering at the doors of the Curia — by 
 men, that is, who did not understand, or whose policy led them to 
 profess misunderstanding of, the problem in statecraft, as dis- 
 honouring in some of its aspects as such problems usually are, 
 which was being faced by a general and a statesman who were 
 pursuing a narrow and traditional but very intelligible line of policy. 
 The policy was indeed sufficiently ugly even had there been no 
 suspicion of personal corruption ; its ugliness could be tested by 
 the fact that even the sanguine and cynical Jugurtha could hardly 
 credit the extent of the good fortune revealed to him by the pro- 
 gress of the negotiations. At first his diplomatic manceuvi'es had 
 been adopted simply as a means of staying the progress of hosti- 
 lities, of gaining a breathing space while he renewed his efforts at 
 influencing opinion in the imperial city. But when he saw that the 
 very agents of war were willing to be missionaries of peace, that the 
 avengers sent out by an injured people were ready for conciliation 
 before they had inflicted punishment, he concentrated his efforts on 
 an immediate settlement of the question.-' It was necessary for the 
 enemy of the Roman people to pass through a preliminary stage of 
 humiliation before he could be recognised as a friend ; it was all the 
 more imperative in this case since a number of angry people in 
 Rome were clamouring for Jugurtha's punishment. It was also 
 necessary to arrange a plan by which the humiliation might be 
 effected with the least inconvenience to both parties. An armistice 
 had already been declared as a necessary preliminary to effective 
 negotiations for a surrender. This condition of peace rendered it 
 possible for Jugurtha to be interviewed in person by a responsible 
 representative of the consul.^ Both the king and the consul were 
 in close touch with one another near the north-western part of the 
 Roman province, and Jugurtha was actually in possession of Vaga, 
 a town only sixty miles south-west of Utica. The town, in spite 
 of its geographical position, was an appanage of the Numidian 
 kingdom,' and the pretext under which Bestia sent his quaestor 
 
 1 Sail. Jug. 29. 3. 
 
 ^ Ihid. 29. 4 Interea fidei causa mittitur a consule Sextius quaestor in oppidum 
 Jugurthae Vagam. 
 
 ' P. 316. Vaga (Bedja) marks the frontier between the Numidian kingdom 
 and the Roman province — the frontier created in 172 B.C. by the invasions of 
 Masinissa and finally fixed in 146 B.C. The town lay on the west of the Wad 
 Bedja, which joins the Medjerda, and on the right of the road from Carthage to 
 Bulla Regia. There was another Vaga in the heart of Numidia, between the 
 Ampsaga and Thabraca. See Tissot Giographie comparie ii. pp. 6, 302 ; Wilmanns 
 in C. I. L. viii. p. 134. 
 
352 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. in 
 
 to the spot, was the acceptance of a supply of corn which had 
 been demanded of the king as a condition of the truce granted 
 by the consul. The presence of the quaestor at Vaga was 
 really meant as a guarantee of good faith, and perhaps he was 
 regarded as a hostage for the personal security of Jugurtha.^ 
 Shortly afterwards the king rode into the Roman camp and was 
 introduced to the consul and his council. He said a few words in 
 extenuation of the hostile feeling with which his recent course of 
 action had been received at Rome, and after this brief apology 
 tisked that his surrender should be accepted. The conditions, it 
 appeared, were not for the full council ; they were for the private 
 ear of Bestia and Scaurus alone.^ With these Jugurtha was soon 
 closeted, and the final programme was definitely arranged. On the 
 following day the king appeared again before the council of war ; 
 the consul pretended to take the opinion of his advisers, but no 
 clear issue for debate could possibly be put before the board ; for 
 the gist of the whole proceedings, the recognition of the right of 
 Jugurtha to retain Numidia, was the result of a secret understand- 
 ing, not of a definite admission that could be blazoned to the 
 world. There was some formal and desultory discussion, opinions 
 on the question of surrender were elicited without any differentia- 
 tion of the many issues that it might involve, and the consul was 
 able to announce in the end that his council sanctioned the accept- 
 ance of Jugurtha's submission.^ The council, however, had deemed 
 it necessary that some visible proof, however slight, should be given 
 that a surrender had been effected ; for it was necessary to convey 
 to the minds of critics at home the impression that some material 
 advantage had been won and that Jugurtha had been humiliated. 
 With this object in view the king was required to hand over some- 
 thing to the Roman authorities. He kept his army, but solemnly 
 transferred thirty elephants, some large droves of cattle and horses, 
 and a small sum of money — the possessions, presumably, which he 
 had ready at hand in his city of Vaga — to the custody of the 
 quaestor of the Roman army.* The year meanwhile was drawing 
 to a close, and the consul, now that peace had been restored, 
 
 ' Long Decline of the Rom. Republic i. p. 400. 
 
 " Sail. jfug. 29. 5 Rex . . . pauca praesenti consilio locutus de invidia fact! 
 sui atque uti in deditionem acciperetur, reliqua cum Bestia et Scauro secreta 
 transigit. 
 
 ' Ibid. (Rex) quasi per saturam sententiis exquisitis in deditionem accipitur. 
 
 * Ibid. 29. 6. 
 
Ill B.C.] AGREEMENT WITH JUGURTHA 353 
 
 quitted his province for Rome to preside at the magisterial elec- 
 tions. ^ The army still remained in the Roman province or in 
 Numidia, but the cessation of hostilities reduced it to a state of 
 inaction which augured ill for its future discipline should it again 
 
 I be called upon to serve. 
 
 The agreement itself mustlhave seemed to its authors a triumph , 
 of diplomacy. They had secured peace with but an inconsiderable 
 loss of honour ; they had saved Rome from a long, difficult and 
 costly war, whilst a modicum of punishment might with some in- 
 genuity be held to have been inflicted on Jugurtha. They must 
 have been astounded by the chorus of execration with which the 
 news of the compact was received at Rome.^ Nor indeed can any 
 single reason, adequate in itself and without reference to others, be as- 
 signed for this feeling of hostility. First, there was the idle gossip 
 of the public places and the clubs — gossip which, in the unhealthy 
 atmosphere of the time, loved to unveil the interested motives 
 which were supposed to underlie the public actions of all men of 
 mark, and which exhibited moderation to an enemy as the crowning 
 proof of its suspicions. Secondly there was the feeling that had 
 been stirred in the proletariate at Rome. The question of Jugurtha, 
 little as they understood its merits, was still to them the great 
 question of the hour, a matter of absorbing interest and expectation. 
 Their feelings had been harrowed by the story of his cruelties, their 
 fears excited by rumours of his power and intentions. They had 
 roused the senate from its lethargy and forced that illustrious body 
 to pursue the great criminal ; they had seen a great army quitting the 
 gates of Rome to execute the work of justice; their relatives and 
 friends had been subjected to the irksome duties of the conscrip- 
 tion. Everywhere there had been a fervid blaze of patriotism, and 
 this blaze had now ended in the thinnest curl of smoke. But to the 
 masses the imagined shame of the Jugurthine War had now become 
 but a single count in an indictment. The origin of the movement 
 was now but its stimulus ; as is the case with most of such popular 
 awakenings, the agitation was now of a wholly illimitable character. 
 The one vivid element in its composition was the memory of the 
 
 recent past. It was easy to arouse the train of thought that centred 
 
 ' Bestia's presence was necessary at Rome as his colleague Nasica had died 
 during his tenure of the consulship (Cic. Brut. 34. 128). 
 
 ^ Sail. yug. 30. I Postquam res in Africa gestas, quoque modo actae \forent 
 fama divolgavit, Romae per omnis locos et conventus de facto consulis agitari. 
 Apud plebem gravis invidia. 
 
354 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. ill 
 
 round the two Gracchan movements and the terrible moments of 
 their catastrophe. The new movement against the senate was in 
 fact but the old movement in another form. The senate had be- 
 trayed the interests of the people ; now it was betraying the interests 
 of the empire ; but to imagine that the form of the indictment as 
 it appealed to the popular mind was even so definite as this, is to 
 credit the average mind with a power of analysis which it does not, 
 and probably would not wish to, possess. It is less easy to gauge 
 the attitude of the commercial classes in this crisis. Their indigna- 
 tion at the impunity given to Jugurtha after the massacre of the 
 merchants at Cirta is easily understood ; but with this class senti- 
 ment was wont to be outweighed by considerations of interest, and 
 the preservation of peace in Numidia, and consequently of facilities 
 for trade, must have been the end which they most desired. But 
 perhaps they felt that the only peace which would serve their pur- 
 poses was one based on a full reassertion of Roman prestige, and 
 perhaps they knew that Jugurtha, the reawakener of the national 
 spirit of the Numidians, would show no friendship to the foreign 
 trader. They must also have seen that, whatever the prospects of 
 the mercantile class under Jugurtha's rule might be, the convention 
 just concluded could not be lasting. Their own previous action 
 had determined its transitory character. By their support of the 
 agitation awakened by Memmius they had created a condition of 
 feeling which could not rest satisfied with the present suspected 
 compromise. But if satisfaction was impossible, a continuance of 
 the war was inevitable. They had before them the prospect of 
 continued unsettlement and insecurity in a fruitful sphere of profit ; 
 and they intended to support the present agitation by their influ- 
 ence in the Comitia and, if necessary, by their verdicts in the courts, 
 until a strong policy had been asserted and a decisive settlement 
 attained. 
 
 Even before the storm of criticism had again gathered strength, 
 there was great anxiety in the senate over the recent action in Nu- 
 midia. That body could doubtless read between the lines and see 
 the real motives of policy which had led up to the present compact ; 
 they could see that the agreement was a compromise between the 
 views of two opposing sections of their own house ; and they 
 must have approved of it in their hearts in so far as it expressed 
 the characteristic objection of the senate as a whole to imperil the 
 security of their imperial system, perhaps even to expose the frontiers 
 
Ill B.C.] AGITATION AT ROME 355 
 
 of their northern possessions now threatened by barbarian hordes, 
 through undertaking an unnecessary war in a southern protectorate. 
 But none the less they saw clearly the invidious elements in the 
 recent stroke of diplomacy, the combination of inconsistency and 
 dishonesty exhibited in the comparison between the magnificent 
 preparations and the futile result — a result which, as interpreted by 
 the ordinary mind, made its authors seem corrupt and the senate 
 look ridiculous. Their anxiety was increased by the fact that an 
 immediate decision on their part was imperative. Were they to 
 sanction what had been done, or to refuse to ratify the decision of 
 the consul ? ^ The latter was of itself an extreme step, but it was 
 rendered still more difficult by the fact that every one knew that 
 Bestia would never have ventured on such a course had he not pos- 
 sessed the support of Scaurus.^ To frame a decision which must be 
 interpreted to mean a vote of lack of confidence in Scaurus, was to 
 unseat the head of the administration, to abandon their ablest 
 champion, perhaps to invite the successful attacks of the leaders of 
 the other camp who were lying in wait for the first false step of the 
 powerful and crafty organiser. Again, as in the discussion which 
 had followed the fall of Cirta, the debates in the senate dragged on 
 and there was a prospect of the question being indefinitely shelved — 
 a result which, when the popular agitation had cooled, would have 
 meant the acceptance of the existing state of things. Again the 
 stimulus to greater rapidity of decision was supplied by Memmius. 
 The leader of the agitation was now invested with the tribunate, 
 and his position gave him the opportunity of unfettered intercourse 
 with the people. His Gontiones were the feature of the day,^ and 
 these popular addresses culminated in the exhortation which he ad- 
 dressed to the crowd after the return of the unhappy Bestia. His 
 speech * shows Memmius to be both the product and the author of 
 the general character which had now been assumed by this long con- 
 tinued agitation on a special point. The golden opportunity had 
 been gained of emphasising anew the fundamental differences of 
 interest between the nobility and the people, of reviewing the 
 conduct of the governing class in its continuous development during 
 
 ^ Sail. yug. 30. I Patres soUiciti erant : probarentne tantum flagitium an 
 decretum consulis subvorterent parum constabat. 
 
 ^ Ibid, 30. 2 Maxume eos potentia Scauri, quod is auctor et socius Bestiae 
 ferebatur, a vero bonoque inpediebat. 
 
 ' Ibid. 30. 3, * Ibid. 31. 
 
356 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. ill 
 
 the last twenty years,i of pointing out the miserable consequences 
 of uncontrolled power, irresponsibility and impunity. For the pur- 
 pose of investing an address with the dignity and authority which 
 spring from distant historical allusion, of brightening the prosaic 
 present with something of the glamour of the half-mythical past, 
 even of flattering his auditors with the suggestion that they were 
 the descendants and heirs of the men who had seceded to the Aven- 
 tine, it was necessary for a popular orator to touch on the great 
 epoch of the struggle between the orders. But Memmius, while 
 satisfying the conditions of his art by the introduction of the sub- 
 ject, uses it only to point the contrast between the epoch when 
 liberty had been won and that wherein it had been lost, or to illus- 
 trate the uselessness of such heroic methods as the old secessions as 
 weapons against a nobility such as the present which was rushing 
 headlong to its own destruction. More important was the memory 
 of those recent years which had seen the life of the people and of 
 their champions become the plaything of a narrow oligarchy. The 
 judicial murders that had followed the overthrow of the Gracchi, 
 the spirit of abject patience with which they had been accepted and 
 endured, were the symbol of the absolute impunity of the oligarchy, 
 the source of their knowledge that they might use their power as 
 they pleased. And how had they used it .'' A general category of 
 their crimes would be misleading ; it was possible to exhibit an 
 ascending scale of guilt. They had always preyed on the common- 
 wealth; but their earlier depredations might be borne in silence. 
 Their earlier victims had been the allies and dependants of Rome ; 
 they had drawn revenues from kings and free peoples, they had 
 pillaged the public treasury. But they had not yet begun to put 
 up for sale the security of the empire and of Rome itself. Now this 
 last and monstrous stage had been reached. The authority of the 
 senate, the power which the people had delegated to its magistrate, 
 had been betrayed to the most dangerous of foes ; not satisfied with 
 treating the allies of Rome as her enemies, the nobility were now 
 treating her enemies as allies.^ And what was the secret of the un- 
 controlled power, the shameless indifference to opinion that made 
 
 ^ The best manuscripts read his annis xv in Sail. jfug. 31. 2, but xv may be a 
 mistake for xx, which is the reading of some good ones. Twenty years would 
 carry us back to 131 B.C., approximately the date of the fall of Tiberius Gracchus. 
 The year 126 B.C. which the reading xv gives, can hardly be said to mark an epoch 
 in the decline of the liberties of the people. 
 
 ^ Sociis nostris veluti hostibus, hostibus pro sociis utuntur (Sail. ^ug. 31. 23). 
 
m B.C.] ACTIVITY OF MEMMIUS 357 
 
 such misdeeds possible ? It was to be found partly in the tolerance 
 of the people — a tolerance which was the result of the imposture 
 which made ill-gained objects of plunder — consulships, priesthoods, 
 triumphs — seem the proof of merit. But it was to be found chiefly 
 in the fact that co-operation in crime had been raised to the dignity 
 of a system which made for the security of the criminal. The 
 solidarity of the nobility, its very detachment from the popular in- 
 terest, was its main source of strength. It had ceased even to be a 
 party ; it had become a clique — a mere faction whose community 
 of hope, interest and fear had given it its present position of over- 
 weening strength.^ This strength, which sprang from perfect unity 
 of design and action, could only be met and broken successfully by 
 a people fired with a common enthusiasm. But what form should 
 this enthusiasm assume ? Should an adviser of the people advocate 
 a violent resumption of its rights, the employment of force to punish 
 the men 'who have betrayed their country.? No! Acts of violence 
 might indeed" be the fitting reward for their conduct, but they are 
 unworthy instruments for the just vengeance of an outraged people. 
 All that we demand is full inquiry and publicity. The secrets of 
 the recent negotiations shall be probed. Jugurtha himself shall be 
 the witness. If he has surrendered to the Roman people, as we are 
 told, he will immediately obey your orders ; if he despises your 
 commands, you will have an opportunity of knowing the true 
 nature of that peace and that submission which have brought to 
 Jugurtha impunity for his crimes, to a narrow ring of oligarchs a 
 large increase in their wealth, to the state a legacy of loss and 
 shame. 
 
 It was on this happily constructed dilemma that Memmius acted 
 when he brought his positive proposal before the people. It was 
 to the effect that the praetor Lucius Cassius Longinus should be 
 sent to Jugurtha and bring him to Home on the faith of a safe 
 conduct granted by the State ; Jugurtha's revelations were to be 
 the key by which the secret chamber of the recent negotiations 
 was to be unlocked, with the desired hope of convicting Scaurus 
 and all others whose contact with the Numidian king, whether in 
 the late or in past transactions,^ had suggested their corruption. 
 
 ' Metum ab scelere suo ad ignaviam vostram transtulere, quos omnis eadem 
 cupere, eadem odisse, eadem metuere in unum coegit, Sed haec inter bonos 
 amicitia, inter malos factio est (Sail. Jug- 31. 14)- 
 
 " Quo facilius indicio regis Scauri et reliquorum, quos pecuniae captae accer- 
 sebat (Memmius), delicta patefieient (Ibid, 33. i). 
 
368 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. no 
 
 The object of this mission had been rapidly regaining the com- 
 plete control of Numidia, which had been momentarily shaken by 
 the Roman invasion. The presence of the Roman army, some 
 portion of which was still quartered in a part of his dominions, was 
 no check on his activity ; for the absence of the commander, the in- 
 capacity and dishonesty of the delegates whom he had left in his 
 place, and the demoralising indolence of the rank and file, had re- 
 duced the forces to a condition lower than that of mere ineffective- 
 ness or lack of discipline. The desire of making a profit out of the 
 situation pervaded every grade. The elephants which had been 
 handed over by Jugurtha, were mysteriously restored ; Numidians 
 who had espoused the cause of Rome and deserted from the army 
 of the king — loyalists whom, whatever their motives and character, 
 Rome was bound to protect — were handed back to the king in 
 exchange for a price ; ^ districts already pacified were plundered by 
 desultory bands of soldiers. The Roman power in Numidia was 
 completely broken when Cassius arrived and revealed his mission to 
 the king. The strange request would have alarmed a timid or 
 ignorant ruler; Jugurtha himself wavered for a moment as to 
 whether he should put himself unreservedly into the power of a 
 hostile people ; but he had sufficient imagination and familiarity 
 with Roman life to realise that the principles of international 
 honour that prevailed amongst despotic monarchies were not those 
 of the great Republic even at its present stage, and he professed 
 himself encouraged by the words of the amiable praetor that 
 " since he had thrown himself on the mercy of the Roman people, 
 he would do better to appeal to their pity than to challenge their 
 might "? His guide added his own word of honour to that of the 
 Republic, and such was the repute of Cassius that this assurance 
 helped to remove the momentary scruples of the king. Once 
 he was assured of personal safety, Jugurtha's visit to Rome became 
 merely a matter of policy, and his rapid mind must have surveyed 
 every issue depending on his acceptance or refusal before he com- 
 mitted himself to so doubtful a step. His real plan of action is 
 
 1 Alii perfugas vendere (Sail, yug. 32. 3). Long (Decline of the Rom. Rep. i. p. 
 406) thinks that this means that they were sold as slaves. But the words are probably 
 to be brought into connection with the terms of the Mamilian commission (Sail. 
 yug. 40. i) " qui elephantos quique perfugas tradidissent ". Ihne (Rom. Gesch. v. p. 
 131) seems to regard \hess perfugae as Roman subjects who had been handed over 
 by Jugurtha. 
 
 ^ Quoniam se populo Romano dedisset, ne vim quam misericordiam ejus experiri 
 mallet (Sail. yug. 32. 5). 
 
no B.C.] JUGURTHA LEAVES FOR ROME 359 
 
 unfortunatelj unknown ; for we possess but the barest outline of 
 these incidents, and we have no information on the really vital point 
 whether communications had reached him from his supporters in 
 the capital, which enabled him to predict the course events would 
 take if he obeyed the summons of Cassius. Had such communi- 
 cations reached him, he might have known that the projected 
 investigation would be nugatory. But a failure in the purpose for 
 which he was summoned could convey no benefit to Jugurtha or 
 his supporters ; it would simply incense the people and place both 
 the king, and his friends amongst the nobility, in a worse position 
 than before. The course of action, by turns sullen, shifty and im- 
 pudent, which he pursued at Rome, must have been due to the 
 exigencies of the moment and the frantic promptings of his fright- 
 ened friends ; for it could scarcely have appealed to a calculating 
 mind as a procedure likely to lead to fruitful results. Its certain 
 issue was war ; but war could be had without the trouble of a 
 journey to Rome. He had but to stay where he was and decline 
 the people's request, and this policy of passive resistance would have 
 the further merit of saving his dignity as a king. It may seem 
 strange that he never adopted the bold but simple plan of standing 
 up in Rome and telling the whole truth, or at least such portions of 
 the truth as might have satisfied the people. It was a course of 
 action that might have secured him his crown. Doubtless if his 
 transactions with Roman officials had been innocent, the truth, if 
 he adhered to it, might not have been believed ; but, if his evid- 
 ence was damning, the people might well have been turned from 
 the insignificant question " Who was to be King of Numidia ? " to 
 the supreme task of punishing the traitors whom he denounced. 
 But we have no right to read Jugurtha's character by the light of 
 the single motive of a self-interest which knew no scruples. He 
 may have had his own ideas of honour and of the protection due to 
 a benefactor or a trusty agent. Self-interest too might in this 
 matter come to the aid of sentiment ; for it was at least possible 
 that the popular storm might spend its fury and leave the nobility 
 still holding their ground. So far as we with our imperfect know- 
 ledge can discern, Jugurtha could have had no definite plan of 
 action when he consented to take the journey to Rome. But he 
 had abundant prospects, if even he possessed no plan. His presence 
 in the capital was a decided advantage, in so far as it enabled him 
 to confer with his leading supporters, and to attend to a matter 
 
A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 110 
 
 affecting his dynastic interests which we shall soon find arousing 
 the destructive energy which was becoming habitual to his jealous 
 and impatient mind. 
 
 When Jugurtha appeared in Rome under the guidance of 
 Cassius, he had laid aside all the emblems of sovereignty and 
 assumed the sordid garb that befitted a suppliant for the mercy of 
 the sovereign people.^ He seemed to have come, not as a witness 
 for the prosecution, but as a suspected criminal who appeared in his 
 own defence. He was still keeping up the part of one whom the 
 fortune of war had thrown absolutely into the power of the con- 
 quering state — a part perhaps suggested by the friendly Cassius, 
 but one that was perfectly in harmony with the pretensions of 
 Bestia and Scaurus. But the heart beneath that miserable dress 
 beat high with hope, and he was soon cheered by messages from 
 the circle of his friends at Rome and apprised of the means which 
 had been taken to baffle the threatened investigation.^ The senate 
 had, as usual, a tribune at its service. Caius Baebius was the name 
 of the man who was willing to play the part, so familiar to the 
 practice of the constitution, of supporter of the government against 
 undue encroachments on its power and dignity, or against over- 
 hasty action by the leaders of the people. The government un- 
 doubtedly had a case. It was contrary to all accepted notions of 
 order and decency that a protected king should be used as a politi- 
 cal instrument by a turbulent tribune. Memmius had impeached 
 no one and had given no notice of a public trial ; yet he intended 
 to bring Jugurtha before a gathering of the rabble and ask him 
 to blacken the names of the foremost men in Rome. It was ex- 
 ceedingly probable that the grotesque proceeding would lead to a 
 breach of the peace ; the sooner it was stopped, the better ; and, 
 although it was unfortunately impossible to prevent Memmius 
 from initiating the drama by bringing forward his protagonist, the 
 law had luckily provided means for ending the performance be- 
 fore the climax had been reached. It was believed that the sound 
 constitutional views of Baebius were strengthened by a great price 
 paid by Jugurtha,^ and, if we care to believe one more of those 
 charges of corruption, the multitude of which had not palled even 
 
 1 Sail. yug. 33. I. 
 
 ' Confirmatus ab omnibus, quorum potentia aut scelere cuncta ea gesserat quae 
 supra diximus [Ibid. 33. 2). 
 
 ^ Ibid. 33. 2 (Jugurtha) C. Baebium tribunum plebis magna mercede parat, cujus 
 inpudentia contra jus et injurias omnis munitus foret. 
 
no B.C.] JUGURTHA AT ROME 361 
 
 on the easily wearied mind of the lively Roman, it is possible to 
 imagine that the implicated members of the senate, in whose 
 interest far more than in that of Jugurtha Baebius was acting, had 
 persuaded the king that it was to his advantage to make the gift. 
 
 The eagerly awaited day arrived, on which the scandal-loving 
 ears of the people were to be filled to the full with the iniquities of 
 their rulers, on which their long-cherished suspicions should be 
 changed to a pleasantly anticipated certainty. Memmius sum- 
 moned his Contio and produced the king. Even the suppliant 
 garb of Jugurtha did not save him from a howl of execration. 
 From the tribunal, to which he had been led by the tribune, he 
 looked over a sea of angry faces and threatening hands, while his 
 ears were deafened by the roar of fierce voices, some crying that he 
 should be put in bonds, Others that he should suffer the death of 
 the traitor if he failed to reveal the partners of his crimes."^ Mem- 
 mius, anxious for the dignity of his unusual proceedings which were 
 being marred by this frantic outburst, used all his efforts to secure 
 order and a patient hearing, and succeeded at length in imposing 
 silence on the crowd — a silence which perhaps marked that psycho- 
 logical moment when pent up feeling had found its full expres- 
 sion and passion had given way to curiosity. The tribune also 
 vehemently asserted his intention of preserving inviolate the safe 
 conduct which had been granted by the State. He then led the 
 king forward ^ and began a recital of the catalogue of his deeds. 
 He spared him nothing ; his criminal activity at Rome and in 
 Numidia, his outrages on his family — the whole history of that 
 career, as it continued to live in the minds of democrats, was fully 
 rehearsed. He concluded the story, which he assumed to be true, 
 by a request for the important details of which full confirmation 
 was lacking. " Although the Roman people understood by whose 
 assistance and ministry all this had been done, yet they wished to 
 have their suspicions finally attested by the king. If he revealed 
 the truth, he could repose abundant hope on the honour and 
 clemency of the Roman people ; if he refused to speak, he would 
 not help the partners of his guilt, but his silence would ruin both 
 himself and his future." Memmius ceased and asked the king for 
 a reply ; Baebius stepped forward and ordered the king to be 
 
 1 Sail. Jug. 33. 3. 
 
 ' Producto Jugurtha {/6»d. 33. 4) i.e. led him to the front of the tribunal, or the 
 Rostra iif the scene took place in the Forum. 
 
362 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 110 
 
 silent.i The voice of Jugurtha could legally find utterance only 
 through the will of the magistrate who commanded ; it was stifled 
 by the prohibition of the colleague who forbade. The people were 
 in the presence of one of those galUng restraints on their own 
 liberty to which the jealousy of the magistracy, expressed in the 
 constitutional creations of their ancestors, so often led. Baebius 
 was immediately subjected to the terrorism which Octavius, his 
 forerunner in tribunician constancy, had once withstood. The 
 frantic mob scowled, shouted, made rushes for the tribunal, and 
 used every effort short of personal assault which anger could suggest, 
 to break the spirit of the man who balked their will. But the re- 
 solution — or, as his enemies said, the shamelessness ^ — of Baebius 
 prevailed. The multitude, tricked of its hopes, melted from the 
 Forum in gloomy discontent. It is said that the hopes of Bestia 
 and his friends rose high.^ Perhaps they had lived too long in se- 
 curity to realise the danger threatened by a disappointed crowd 
 that might meet to better purpose some future day ; that had 
 gained from the insulting scene itself an embittered confirmation of 
 its views, with none of the softening influence which springs from a 
 curiosity completely satiated ; that, as an assembly of the sovereign 
 people, might at any moment avenge the latest outrage which had 
 been inflicted on its dignity. 
 
 Jugurtha had, perhaps through no fault of his own, sorely tried 
 the patience of the people on the one occasion on which, as a pro- 
 fessed suppliant, he had come into contact with his sovereign. He 
 was now, on his own initiative, to try it yet further, and to test it 
 in a manner which aroused the horror and resentment of many who 
 did not share the views of Memmius. The king was not the only 
 representative of Masinissa's house at present to be found in Rome. 
 There resided in the city, as a fugitive from his power, his cousin 
 Massiva, son of Gulussa and grandson of Masinissa. It is not known 
 why this scion of the royal house had been passed over in the regu- 
 lation of the succession, although it is easily intelligible that Micipsa, 
 with two sons of his own, might not have wished to increase the 
 number of co-regents of Numidia by recognising his brother's heirs, 
 and would not have done so had he not been forced by circumstances 
 to adopt Jugurtha.* During the early struggles between the three 
 kings, Massiva had attached himself to the party of Hiempsal and 
 
 ' Regem tacere jubet (Sail. ^ug. 34. i). 
 
 " Vicit tamen inpudentia (Ibid^. * Ibid. 34. 2. « qf. p. 323. 
 
no B.C.] MURDER OF MASSIVA 363 
 
 Adherbal, and had thus incurred Jugurtha's enmity ; but he had 
 continued to live in Numidia as long as there was any hope of the 
 continuance of the dual kingship. The fall of Cirta and the death 
 of Adherbal had forced him to find a refuge at Rome, where he 
 continued to reside in peace until fate suddenly made him a pawn 
 in the political game. At last there had arisen a definite section 
 amongst the nobility which found it to its interest to ofl'er an 
 active opposition to Jugurtha's claims. The consuls who succeeded 
 Bestia and Nasica, were Spurius Albinus and Quintus Minucius Rufus. 
 The latter had won the province of Macedonia and the protection 
 of the north-eastern frontier ; to the former had fallen Numidia and 
 the conduct of affairs in Africa. The fact that the senate had de- 
 clared Numidia a consular province before the close of the previous 
 year, was the ostensible proof that they had yielded to the pressure 
 applied by Memmius and nominally at least repudiated the pacifi- 
 cation efiected by Bestia and Scaurus. But the rejection of this 
 aiTangement seems never to have been officially declared ; there 
 was still a chance of the recognition of Jugurtha's claims, and of the 
 governor of Numidia being assigned the inglorious function of see- 
 ing to the restoration of the king and then evacuating his territory. 
 Such a modest role did not at all harmonise with the views of Al- 
 binus. He wished a real command and a genuine war ; but it was 
 not easy to wage such a war as long as Jugurtha was the only can- 
 didate in the field. Even if his surrender were regarded as fictitious 
 and the war were resumed on that ground, it was difficult to assign 
 it an ultimate object, since the senate had no intention of making 
 Numidia a province. But the object which would make the war a 
 living reality could be secured, if a pretender were put forward for 
 the Numidian crown ; and such a pretender Albinus sought in the 
 scion of Masinissa's race now resident in Rome, whose birth gave 
 him a better hereditary claim than Jugurtha himself. The consul 
 approached Massiva and urged him to make a case out of the odium 
 excited and the fears inspired by Jugurtha's crimes, and to approach 
 the senate with a request for the kingdom of Numidia.^ The 
 prince caught at the suggestion, the petition was prepared, and 
 this new and unexpected movement began to make itself felt. Ju- 
 gurtha's fear and anger were increased by the sudden discovery that 
 his friends at Rome were almost powerless to help him. They 
 
 ' Sail. yug. 35. 2. It is not impossible that he may have been mentioned as 
 one of the supplementary heiis in Micipsa's will. See p. 323. 
 
A HISTORY OF ROME [BC^ 110 
 
 could not parade a question of principle when it came to persons; 
 a kingdom in Numidia was more easily defended than its king; 
 every act of assistance which they rendered plunged them deeper in 
 the mire of suspicion; it was a time to walk warily, for those who 
 had no judge in their own conscience found one in the keen scrutiny 
 of a hostile world. But the danger was too great to permit Jugurtha 
 to relax his efforts through the failure of his friends. He appealed 
 to his own resources, which consisted of the passive obedience of his 
 immediate attendants and the power of his purse. To Bomilcar 
 his most trusted servant he gave the mission of making one final 
 effort with the gold which had already done so much. Men might 
 be hired who would lie in wait for Massiva. If possible, the matter 
 was to be effected secretly. If secrecy was impossible, the Numidian 
 must yet be slain. His death was deserving of any risk. Bomilcar 
 was prompt in carrying out his mission. A band of hired spies 
 watched every movement of Massiva. They learnt the hours at 
 which he left and returned to his home ; the places he visited, the 
 times at which his visits were paid. When the seasonable hour ar- 
 rived, the ambush was set by Bomilcar. The elaborate precautions 
 which had been taken proved to have been thrown away ; the as- 
 sassin who struck the fatal blow was no adept in the art of secret 
 killing. Hardly had Massiva fallen when the alarm was given and 
 the murderer seized.^ The men who had an interest in Massiva's 
 life were too numerous and too great to make it possible for the act 
 to sink to the level of ordinary street outrages, or for the assassin 
 caught red-handed to be regarded as the sole author of the crime. 
 The consul Albinus amongst others pressed the murderer to reveal 
 the instigator of the deed, and the senate must have promised the 
 immunity that was sometimes given to the criminal who named his 
 accomplices. The man named BomilcEir, who was thereupon form- 
 ally arraigned of the murder and bound over to stand his trial 
 before a criminal coui-t. Even this step was taken with considerable 
 hesitation, for it was admitted that the safe-conduct which protected 
 Jugurtha extended to his retinue.^ The king and his court were 
 strictly speaking extra-territorial, and the strict letter of inter- 
 national law would have handed Bomilcar over for trial by his 
 sovereign. But it was felt that a departure from custom was a less 
 
 ^ Sail. Jug. 35. 6. 
 
 2 Ibid. 35. 7 Fit reus magis ex aequo bonoque quam ex jure gentium Bomilcar, 
 comes ejus qui Romam fide publica venerat. 
 
no B.C.] JUGURTHA LEAVES ROME 365 
 
 evil than to allow such an outrage to remain unpunished, and it was 
 easier to satisfy the popular conscience by finding Bomilcar guilty 
 than to fix the crime on the man whom every one named as its ulti- 
 mate author. Jugurtha himself was inclined for a time to acquiesce 
 in this view ; he regarded the trial of his favourite as inevitable 
 and furnished fifty of his own acquaintances who were willing to 
 give bail for the appearance of the accused. But reflection con- 
 vinced him that the sacrifice was unnecessary ; his name could not 
 be saved by Bomilcar's doom, and no influence or wealth could 
 create even a pretence at belief in his own innocence. His standing 
 in Rome was gone, and this made him the more eager to consider 
 his standing as King of Numidia. If Bomilcar were sacrificed, his 
 powerlessness to protect the chief member of his retinue might 
 shake the allegiance of his own subjects.^ He therefore smuggled 
 his accused henchman from Rome and had him conveyed secretly to 
 Numidia. This, of all Jugurtha's acts of perfidy perhaps the mild- 
 est and most excusable, in spite of the awkward predicament in 
 which it left the fifty securities, was the last of the baffling incidents 
 that had been crowded into his short sojourn at Rome. His pre;' 
 sence must have been an annoyance to every one. He had exhausted 
 his friends, had failed to serve the purposes of the opposition leader, 
 and had inspired in the senate memories and anticipations which they 
 were willing to forget. When that body ordered him to quit Italy- 
 it must have expressed the wish of every class. Within a few days 
 of Bomilcar's disappearance the king himself was leaving the gates. 
 It is said that he often turned and took a long and silent look at 
 the distant town, and that at last the words broke from him " A 
 city for sale and ripe for ruin, if only a purchaser can be found ! " ^ 
 The departure of Jugurtha implied the renewal of the war. 
 The compact made with Bestia and Scaurus had been tacitly, if not 
 formally, repudiated by the senate, and the fiction that Jugurtha 
 had surrendered, although it had played its part in the negotiations 
 which brought him to Rome, disappeared with the compact. Since, 
 however, the right of Jugurtha to retain Numidia, which was the 
 objectiona,ble element in the late agreement, seems to have been 
 implied rather than expressed, it may have seemed possible to take 
 the view that Jugurtha's surrender was unconditional, and that the 
 war was now the pursuit of an escaped prisoner of Rome. Such a 
 
 1 Sail. yiig. 35. 9. 
 
 2 Urbem venalem et mature perituram, si emptorera inveneritl (IHd. 35. 10). 
 
366 A HISTORY OF ROME [B-C 110 
 
 conception was absolutely worthless so far as most of the practical 
 difficulties of the task were concerned ; for, whether Jugurtha was 
 an enemy or a rebel, he was equally difficult to secure; but it may 
 have had a considerable influence on the principles on which the 
 Numidian war was now to be conducted, and we shall find on the 
 part of Rome a growing disinclination to give Jugurtha the benefits 
 of those rules of civilised warfare of which she generally professed a 
 scrupulous observance in the letter if not in the spirit. The object 
 of the war was, through its very simplicity, extraordinarily difficult 
 of attainment. It was neither more nor less than the seizure of the 
 person of Jugurtha. Numidia had no common government and no 
 unity but those personified in its king, and the conquest of frag- 
 ments of the country would be almost useless until the king was 
 secured. The hope of setting up a rival pretender, whose recogni- 
 tion by Rome might have enabled organisation to keep pace with 
 conquest, had perished with the murder of Massiva,^ although 
 it is very questionable whether the name even of the son of the 
 warlike Gulussa would have detached any of the military strength 
 of Numidia from a monarch who had stirred the fighting spirit of 
 the nation and was regarded as the embodiment of its manliest tra- 
 ditions. The outlook of the consul Albinus, the new organiser of 
 the war on the Roman side, was indeed a poor one, and it was made 
 still poorer by the fact that a considerable portion of his year of 
 office had already lapsed, and the events of his campaign must of 
 necessity be crowded into the few remaining months of the summer 
 and the early autumn. Had there been any spirit of self-sacrifice 
 in Roman commanders, or any true continuity in Roman military 
 policies, Albinus might have set himself the useful task of organising 
 victory for his successors ; yet he cannot be wholly blamed for the 
 hope, wild and foolish as it seems, of striking some decisive blow in 
 the narrow time allowed him.^ The military operations of the war 
 at this stage become almost wholly subordinate to political consid- 
 erations. Senate and consuls were being swept off their feet and 
 forced into a disastrous celerity or superficiality of action by the 
 
 1 There was still an heir in Gauda — one too who had been recognised in the 
 testament of Micipsa (p. 323) ; but he may not have been regarded as a suitable 
 candidate. 
 
 '^ Sail. yug. 36. I Albinus renovate bello commeatum, stipendium, aliaque, 
 quae militibus usui forent, maturat in Africam portare, ac statim ipse profectus, uti 
 ante comitia, quod tempus baud longe aberat, armis aut deditione aut quovis modo 
 bellum conficeret. 
 
no B.C.] RENEWAL OF THE WAR 
 
 growing tide of indignation which animated commons and capital- 
 ists alike ; and the feeling that something decisive must be accom- 
 plished for the satisfaction of public opinion, was supplemented by 
 the lower but very human consideration that a general must seem 
 to have attained some success if he hoped to have his command 
 prolonged for another year. The senate, it is true, might have 
 insight enough to see that success in a war such as that in Numidia 
 could not be gauged by the brilliance of the results obtained ; but 
 how were they to defend their verdict to the people unless they 
 could point to exploits such as would dazzle the popular eye ? But 
 although a feverish policy seemed the readiest mode of escape from 
 public suspicion or inglorious retirement, it had its own particular 
 nemesis, of which Albinus seemed for the moment to be oblivious. 
 To finish the war in a short time meant to finish it by any means 
 that came to hand. But, if a striking victory did not surrender 
 Jugurtha into the hands of his conqueror — and even the most 
 glorious victory did not under the circumstances of the war imply 
 the captui'e of the vanquished — what means remained except nego- 
 tiation and the voluntary surrender of the king .? ^ Such means had 
 been employed by Bestia, and every one knew now with what result. 
 The policy of haste might breed more suspicion and bitterness than 
 the most desultory conduct of the campaign. 
 
 Albinus made rapid but ample preparation of supplies, money 
 and munitions of war, and hurried oif to the scene of his intended 
 successes. The army which he found must have been in a miserable 
 condition, if we may judge by the state which the last glimpse of it 
 revealed ; ^ but his fixed intention of accomplishing something, no 
 matter what, must have rendered adequate re-organisation impossible, 
 and he took the field against Jugurtha with forces whose utter 
 demoralisation was soon to be put to a frightful test. The war 
 immediately assumed that character of an unsuccessful hunt, varied by 
 indecisive engagements and fruitless victories, which it was to retain 
 even under the guidance of the ablest that Rome could furnish. Ju- 
 gurtha adhered to his inevitable plan of a prolonged and desultory 
 campaign over a vast area of country ; the size and physical char- 
 acter of his kingdom, the extraordinary mobility of his troops, the 
 credulity and anxious ambition of his opponent, were all elements of 
 strength which he used with consummate skill. He retired before 
 
 ' Cf. Sail. jfug. 36. I (quoted p. 366) Armis aut deditione aut quovis modo. 
 » P. 358- 
 
A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. no 
 
 the threatening column ; then, that his men might not lose heart, 
 he threw himself with startling suddenness on the foe ; at other 
 times he mocked the consul with hopes of peace, entered into nego- 
 tiations for a suiTender and, when he had disarmed his adversary by 
 hopes, suddenly drew back in a pretended access of distrust. The 
 futility of Albinus's efforts was so pronounced — a futility all the 
 more impressive from the intensity of his preparations and his 
 excessive eagerness to reach the field of action — that people ignor- 
 ant of the conditions of the campaign began again to whisper the 
 perpetual suspicion of collusion with the king.^ The suspicion 
 might not have been avoided even by a commander who declined 
 negotiation; but Albinus's case had been rendered worse by his 
 unsuccessful efforts to play with a master of craft, and it was with a 
 reputation greatly weakened from a military, and slightly damaged 
 from a moral, point of view that he brought the campaign to a 
 close, sent his army into winter quarters, and left for Rome to pre- 
 side at the electoral meetings of the people.^ The Comitia for the 
 appointment of the consuls and the praetors were at this time held 
 during the latter half of the year, but at no regular date, the time 
 for their summons depending on the convenience of the presiding 
 consul and on his freedom from other and more pressing engage- 
 ments.^ Albinus may have arrived in Rome during the late autumn. 
 Had he been able to get the business over and return to Africa for 
 the last month or two of the year, his conduct of the war might 
 have been considered ineffective but not disastrous, and the senate 
 might have been spared a problem more terrible than any that had 
 yet arisen out of its relations with Jugurtha. For Albinus, though 
 sanguine and unpractical, seems to have been reasonably prudent, 
 and he might have handed over an army, unsuccessful but not dis- 
 graced, and recruited in strength by its long winter quarters, to 
 the care of a more fortunate successor. But, as it happened, every 
 public department in Rome was feeling the strain caused by a minor 
 constitutional crisis which had arisen amongst the magistrates of 
 the Plebs. The sudden revival of the people's aspirations had 
 doubtless led to a certain amount of misguided ambition on the 
 
 1 Sail. yug. 36. 3 Ac fuere qui turn Albinum haud ignarum consili regis existu- 
 marent, neque ex tanta properantia tarn facile tractum bellum socordia magis quam 
 dolo crederent. 
 
 ' His colleague Quintus Minucius Rufus was making war with the barbarians of 
 Thrace (Liv. Ep. Ixv ; Vellei. ii. 8 ; Florus i. 39 (iii. 4) ; Eutrop. iv. 27). 
 
 ' See p. 264, and cf. Meinel Zur Chronologie des jug. Krieges p. II, 
 
1 10 B.C.] ENTERPRISE OP AULUS ALBINUS 
 
 part of some of its leaders, and the tribunate was now the centre of 
 an agitation which was a faint counterpart of the closing scenes in 
 the Gracchsin struggles. Two occupants of the office, Publius Lu- 
 cullus and Lucius Annius, were attempting to secure re-election for 
 another year. Their colleagues resisted their effort, probably on 
 the ground that the conditions requisite for re-election were not in 
 existence,^ and this conflict not merely prevented the appointment 
 of plebeian magistrates from being completed, but stayed the pro- 
 gress of the other elective Comitia as well.^ The tribunes, whether 
 those who aimed at re-election or those who attempted to prevent 
 it, had either declared a justitium or threatened to veto every 
 attempt made by a magistrate of the people to hold an electoral 
 assembly ; and the consequence of this impasse was that, when the 
 year drew to a close,' no new magistrates were in existence and the 
 consul Albinus was still absent from his African command. 
 
 Unfortunately the absence of the proconsul, as Albinus had 
 now become in default of the appointment of a successor, did not 
 have the effect of checking the enterprise of the army. It was now 
 under the authority of Aulus Albinus, to whom his brother had 
 delegated the command of the province and the forces during his 
 stay at Rome. The stimulus which moved Aulus to action is not 
 known. The unexpected duration of his temporary command may 
 have famiUarised him with power, stimulated his undoubted con- 
 fidence in himself, and suggested the hope that by one of those 
 unexpected blows, with which the annals of strategic genius were 
 filled, he might redeem his brother's reputation and win lasting 
 glory for himself. Others believed that the perpetually sus- 
 pected motive of cupidity was the basis of his enterprise, that he 
 had no definitely conceived plan of conquest, but intended by the 
 terror of a military demonstration to exact money from Jugurtha.* 
 If the latter view was correct, it is possible that Aulus imagined 
 himself to be acting in the interest of his army as well as of him- 
 self. The long winter quarters may have betrayed a deficiency in 
 pay and provisions, and if Jugurtha purchased the security of a 
 district, its immunity would be too public an event to make it 
 
 ' P. 165. 
 
 ^ Quae dissensio totius anni comitia inpediebat (Sail. jfug. 37. 2). 
 
 * The tribunicidn year ended with gth December, but it is not likely that the 
 consuls of log, Metellus and Silanus, were elected between this date and ist January 
 of log. Had they been, Metellus would have held Numidia and Sp. Albinus would 
 not have been allowed to return there. 
 
 * Sail. yug. 37. 3. 
 
 24 
 
370 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 109 
 
 possible for the commander of the attacking forces to pocket the 
 whole of the ransom. 
 
 It was in the month of January, in the very heart of a severe 
 winter, that Aulus summoned his troops from the security of their 
 quarters to a long and fatiguing march. His aim was Suthul, 
 a strongly fortified post on the river Ubus, nearly forty miles south 
 of Hippo Regius and the sea, and so short a distance from the 
 larger and better-known town of Calama, the modern Gelma, that 
 the latter name was sometimes used to describe the scene of the in- 
 cidents that followed.! \Ye are not told the site of the winter 
 quarters from which the march began ; but the ineffectiveness of 
 the former campaign and the caution of Albinus, who did not 
 mean his legions to fight during his absence, might lead us to sup- 
 pose that the troops had been quartered in or near the Roman 
 province ; and in this case Aulus might have marched along the 
 valley of the Bagradas to reach his destined goal, which would 
 finally have been approached from the south through a narrow 
 space between two ranges of hills, the westernmost of which was 
 crowned at its northern end by the fortifications of Suthul. This 
 was reported to be the chief treasure-city of Jugurtha; could 
 Aulus capture it, or even bargain for its security with the king, 
 he might cripple the resources of the Numidian monarch and win 
 great wealth for himself and his army. By long and fatiguing 
 marches he reached the object of his attack, only to discover at the 
 first glance that it was impregnable — nay even, as a soldier's eye 
 would have seen, that an investment of the place was utterly im- 
 possible.^ The rigour of the season had aggravated the difficulties 
 presented by the site. Above towered the city walls perched on 
 their precipitous rock ; below was the alluvial plain which the 
 deluging rains of a Numidian winter had turned into a swamp of 
 liquid mud. Yet Aulus, either dazzled by the vision of the gold 
 concealed within the fortress which it had caused him such labour 
 to reach, or with some vague idea that a pretence at an investment 
 might alarm the king into coming to terms for the protection of his 
 hoard, began to make formal preparations for a siege, to bring up 
 
 ^ There is little probability that the Calama (Gelma) of Orosius (v. 15) and the 
 Suthul of Sallust are identical. Those who have visited the site of Gelma deny 
 that Sallust's description suits this region and think that Suthul was a place near by. 
 Grellois (Ghelma pp. 263 foil.) thinks that Suthul may be placed on a site where now 
 stands the village of Henschir Ain Neschma, one hour's distance from Gelma. See 
 Wilmanns in C. I. L. viii. p. 521. 
 
 " Sail. yug. 37. 4. 
 
109 B.C.] THE ROMAN ARMY SURPRISED 371 
 
 mantlets, to mark out his lines of circuravallation,' to deceive his 
 enemy, if he could not deceive himself, into a belief that the 
 conditions rendered an attack on Suthul possible. 
 
 It is needless to say that Jugurtha knew the possibilities of his 
 treasure-city far better than its assailant. But the simple device of 
 Aulus was admirably suited to his plans. Humble messages soon 
 reached the camp of the legate ; the missives of every successive 
 envoy augmented his illusion and stirred his idle hopes to a higher 
 pitch. Jugurtha's own movements began to give proof of a state 
 of abject terror. So far from coming to the relief of his threatened 
 city, he drew his forces farther away into the most difficult country 
 he could find, everywhere quitting the open ground for sheltered 
 spots and mountain paths. At last from a distance he began to 
 hold out definite hopes of an agreement with Aulus. But it was 
 one that must be transacted personally and in private. The plain 
 round Suthul was much too public a spot ; let the legate follow 
 the king into the fastnesses of the desert and all would be arranged. 
 The legate advanced as the king retired ; but at every point of the 
 difficult march Numidian spies were hovering around the Roman 
 column. The disgust of the soldiers at the hardships to which they 
 had been submitted in the pursuit of this phantom gold, the last 
 evidence of which had vanished when their commander turned his 
 back on the walls of Suthul, now resulted in a frightful state of 
 demoralisation. The lower officers in authority, centurions and 
 commanders of squadrons of horse, stole from the camp to hold con- 
 verse with Jugurtha's spies ; some sold themselves to desert to the 
 Numidian army, others to quit their posts at a given signal. The 
 mesh was at last prepared. On one dark night, at the hour of 
 the first sleep when attack is least suspected, the camp of Aulus 
 was suddenly surrounded by the Numidian host. The surprise 
 was complete. The Roman soldiers, in the shock of the sudden 
 din, were utterly unnerved. Some groped for their arms ; others 
 cowered in their tents ; a few tried to create some order amongst 
 their ten'or-stricken comrades. But nowhere could a real stand be 
 made or real discipline observed. The blackness of the night 
 and the heavy driving clouds prevented the numbers of the enemy 
 from being seen, and the size of the Numidian host, lar'ge in itself, 
 was perhaps increased by a terrified imagination. It was difficult 
 
 ' Vineas agere, aggerem jacere, aliaque quae incepto usui foient properare (Sail. 
 y^g- 37- 4)- 
 
374 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 109 
 
 people.1 It was a decision that recalled the days of Numantia or 
 the more distant history of the Caudine Forks ; but the formal 
 sacrifice that followed and was thought to justify those famous 
 instances of breach of contract, was no longer deemed worthy of 
 observance, and Aulus was not surrendered to the vengeance or 
 mercy of the foe with whom he had involuntarily broken faith. 
 This summary invalidation of the treaty may have been the result 
 of a deduction drawn from the peculiar circumstances which had 
 preceded the renewal of the war — circumstances which, as we have 
 seen,^ might be twisted to support the view that Jugurtha was not 
 an independent enemy of Rome and was, therefore, not entitled to 
 the full rights of a belligerent. 
 
 The senate's decision left Albinus free to act and to make use 
 of the new military forces that he had so strenuously prepared. 
 But a sudden hindrance came from another quarter. Some tribunes 
 expressed the not unreasonable view that a commander of Albinus's 
 record should not be allowed to expose Rome's last resources to 
 destruction. Had they meant him to remain in command, their 
 attitude would have been indefensible ; but, when they forbade him 
 to take the new recruits to Africa,^ they were merely reserving them 
 for a more worthy successor. Albinus, however, meant to make 
 the most of his limited tenure. He had his own and his brother's 
 honour to avenge, and within a few days of the senate's decree per- 
 mitting a renewal of the war, he had taken ship for the African 
 province, where the whole army, withdrawn from Numidia in ac- 
 cordance with the compact, was now stationed in winter quarters. 
 For a time his burning desire to clear his name made him blind to 
 the defects of his forces ; he thought only of the pursuit of Jugurtha, 
 of some vigorous stroke that might erase the stain from the honour 
 of his family. But hard facts soon restored the equilibrium of his 
 naturally prudent soul. The worst feature of the army was not 
 that it had been beaten, but that it had not been commanded. 
 The reins of discipline had been so slack that licence and indulgence 
 had sapped its fighting strength. The tyranny of circumstances 
 demanded a peaceful sojourn in the province, and Albinus resigned 
 himself to the inevitable. 
 
 At Rome meanwhile the movement for inquiry that had been 
 
 1 Senatus ita uti par fuerat decernit, suo atque populi injussu nullum potuiSse 
 foedus fieri (Sail. yug. 39. 3). 
 
 ^ P. 366. ' Sail. yug. 39. 4. 
 
no B.C.] THE MAMILIAN COMMISSION 375 
 
 stayed for the moment by the co-operation of Jugurtha and his 
 senatorial friends, and by the obstructive attitude of Baebius, had 
 been resumed with greater intensity and promise of success. It did 
 not need the disaster of Aulus to re-awaken it to new life. That 
 disaster no doubt accelerated its course and invested it with an un- 
 scrupulous thoroughness of character that it might otherwise have 
 lacked ; but the movement itself had perhaps taken a definite shape 
 a month before the result of Aulus's experiment in Numidia was 
 known, and was the natural result of the feeling of resentment 
 which the conspiracy of silence had created. It now assumed the 
 exact and legal form of the demand for a commission which should 
 investigate, adjudicate and punish. The leaders of the people had 
 conceived the bold and original design of wresting from the hands, 
 and directing against the person, of the senate the powerful weapon 
 with which that body had so often visited epidemics of crime or 
 turbulence that were supposed to have fastened on the helpless 
 proletariate. Down to this time special commissions had either 
 been set up by the co-operation of senate and people, or had, with 
 questionable legality, been established by the senate alone. The 
 commissioners, who were sometimes consuls, sometimes praetors, had, 
 perhaps always but certainly in recent history, judged without ap- 
 peal ; and in the judicial investigations which followed the fall of 
 the Gracchi, the people had had no voice either in the appointment 
 of the judge or in the ratification of the sentence which he pro- 
 nounced. Now the senate as a whole was to be equally voiceless ; 
 it was not to be asked to take the initiative in the creation of the 
 court, the penalties were to be determined without reference to its 
 advice, and although the presidents would naturally be selected from 
 members of the senatorial order, if they were to be chosen from men 
 of eminence at all, these presidents were to be merely formal guides 
 of the proceedings, like the praetor who sat in the court which tried 
 cases of extortion, and the verdict was to be pronounced by judges 
 inspired by the prevailing feeling of hostility to the crimes of the 
 official class. 
 
 Caius Mamilius Limetanus, who proposed and probably aided in 
 drafting this bill, was a tribune who belonged to the college which 
 perhaps came into office towards the close of the month of December 
 which had preceded the recent disaster in Numidia. ^ The bill, the 
 promulgation of which was probably one of the first acts of his 
 
 ' See p. 369. 
 
376 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 110, 109 
 
 tribunate, proposed " that an inquiry should be directed into the 
 conduct of all those individuals, whose counsel had led Jugurtha to 
 neglect the decrees of the senate, who had taken money from the king 
 whether as members of commissions or as holders of military com- 
 mands, who had handed over to him elephants of war and deserters 
 from his army ; lastly, all who had made agreements with enemies 
 of the State on matters of peace or war".^ The comprehensive 
 nature of the threatened inquiry spread terror amongst the ranks of 
 the suspected. The panic was no sign of guilt ; a party warfare was 
 to be waged with the most undisguised party weapons ; and mere 
 membership of the suspected faction aroused fears almost as acute 
 as those which were excited by the consciousness of guilt. There 
 was a prospect of rough and ready justice, where proof might rest on 
 prepossession and verdicts be considered preordained. The bitter- 
 ness of the situation was increased by the impossibility of open 
 resistance to the measure ; for such a resistance would imply an un- 
 willingness to submit to inquiry, and such a refusal, invidious in 
 itself, would fix suspicion and be accepted as a confession of misdeeds 
 which could not bear the light of investigation. With the city 
 proletariate against them, the threatened members of the aristocracy 
 could look merely to secret opposition by their own supporters, 
 and to such moderate assistance as was secured by the friendly 
 attitude which their recent agrarian measures had awakened in 
 the Latins and Italian allies.^ But the latter support was moral 
 rather than material, or if it became effective, could only secure this 
 character by fraud. The allies, whom the senate had driven from 
 Rome by Pennus's law,^ were apparently to be invited to flood the 
 contiones and raise cries of protest against the threatened indict- 
 ment. But this device could only be successful in the preliminary 
 stages of the agitation. The Latins possessed but few votes, the 
 Italians none, and personation, if resorted to, was not likely to elude 
 the vigilance of the hostile presidents of the tribunician assembly, 
 or, if undetected, to be powerful enough to turn the scale in favour 
 of the aristocracy. For the unanimity of opposition which the nobil- 
 ity now encountered in the citizen body, was almost unexampled. 
 The differences of interest which sometimes separated the country 
 from the city voters, seem now to have been forgotten. The tri- 
 
 ^ Sail. yug. 40. I. Cf. p. 358, note i. 
 
 » Occulte per amicos ac maxume per homines nominis Latini et socios Italicos 
 inpedimenta parabant {Ibid. 40. 2). For the later relations of the government with 
 the Latins and allies see p. 288. a P. 166. 
 
no, 109 B.C.] THE MAMILIAN COMMISSION 377 
 
 bunes found no difficulty in keeping the agitation up to fever-heat, 
 and its permanence was as marked as its intensity. The crowds 
 that acclaimed the proposal, were sufficiently in earnest to remain at 
 Rome and vote for it ; the emphasis with which the masses assembled 
 at the final meeting, " ordered, decreed and willed " the measure 
 submitted for their approval, was interpreted (perhaps rightly) as a 
 shout of triumphant defiance of the nobility, not as a vehement 
 expression of disinterested affection for the State.'' The two emo- 
 tions were indeed blended ; but the imperial sentiment is oftenest 
 aroused by danger ; and the individuals who have worked the mis- 
 chief are the concrete element in a situation, the reaction against 
 which has roused the exaltation which veils vengeance and hatred 
 under the names of patriotism and justice. 
 
 When the measure had been passed, it still remained to appoint 
 the commissioners. This also was to be effected by the people's 
 vote, and never perhaps was the effect of habit on the popular mind 
 more strikingly exhibited than when Scaurus, who was thought to 
 be trembling as a criminal, was chosen as a judge. ^ The large per- 
 sonal following, which he doubtless possessed amongst the people, 
 must have remained unshaken by the scandals against his name ; 
 but the reflection amongst all classes that any business would be 
 incomplete which did not secure the co-operation of the head of the , 
 State, was perhaps a still more potent factor in his election. Never 
 was a more splendid testimonial given to a public man, and it ac- 
 companied, or prepared the way for, the greatest of all honours that 
 it was in the power of the Comitia to bestow — the control of morals 
 which Scaurus was in that very year to exercise as censor.* The pre- 
 sence of the venerable statesman amongst the three commissioners 
 created under the Mamilian law, could not, however, exercise a con- 
 trolling influence on the judgments of the special tribunal. Such 
 an influence was provided against by the very structure of the new 
 courts. The three commissioners were not to judge but merely to 
 preside ; for in the constitution of this commission the new departure 
 was taken of modelling it on the pattern of the newly established 
 standing courts, and the judges who gave an uncontrolled and final 
 verdict were men selected on the same qualifications as those which 
 
 ^ Sed plebes incredibile memoratu est quam interna fuerit quantaque vi roga- 
 tionem jusserit, magis odio nobilitatis cui mala ilia parabantur, quam cura rei 
 publicae : tanta lubido in partibus erat (Sail. fug. 40. 3). 
 
 » Ihid. 40. 4. ' [Victor] de Vir. III. 72 ; Plut. Quaest. Rom. 50. 
 
378 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 109 
 
 produced the Gracchan jurors, and were perhaps taken from the 
 list abeady in existence for the trial of cases of extortion. The 
 knights were, therefore, chosen as the vehicle for the popular indig- 
 nation, and the result justified the choice. The impatience of a 
 hampered commerce, and perhaps of an outraged feeling of respect- 
 ability, spent itself without mercy on the devoted heads of some 
 of the proudest leaders of the faction that had so long controlled 
 the destinies of the State. Expedition in judgment was probably 
 secured by dividing the commissioners into three courts, each with 
 his panel of judices and all acting concurrently. It was still 
 more effectually secured by the mode in which evidence was heard, 
 tested and accepted, and by the scandalous rapidity with which judg- 
 ment was pronounced. The courts were influenced by every chance 
 rumour and swayed by the wild caprices of public opinion. No 
 sane democrat could in the future pretend to regard the MamiUan 
 commission as other than an outrage on the name of justice; to 
 the philosophic mind it seemed that a sudden turn in fortune's wheel 
 had brought to the masses the same intoxication in the sense of un- 
 bridled power that had but a moment before been the disgrace of 
 the nobility.^ An old score was wiped off when Lucius Opimius, 
 the author of the downfall of Caius Gracchus, was condemned. 
 Three other names completed the tale of victims who had been 
 rendered illustrious by the possession of the consular fasces. Lu- 
 cius Bestia was convicted for the conclusion of that dark treaty 
 with Jugiu-tha, although his counsellor Scaurus had been elevated to 
 the Bench. Spurius Aibinus fell a victim to his own caution and 
 the blunder of his too-enterprising brother ; the caution was sup- 
 posed to have been purchased by Jugurtha's gold, and the absent 
 pro-consul was perhaps held responsible for the rashness or cupidity 
 of his incompetent legate, who does not seem to have been himself 
 assailed. Caius Porcius Cato was emerging from the cloud of a 
 recent conviction for extortion ^ only to feel the weight of a more 
 crushing j udgment which drove him to seek a refuge on Spanish 
 soil. Caius Sulpicius Galba, although he had held no dominant 
 position in the secular hfe of the State, was a distinguished member 
 of the religious hierarchy ; but even the memorable speech which he 
 
 ' Sail. yug. 40. s Sed quaestio exercita aspere violenterque ex rumore et lubidine 
 plebis. Ut saepe nobilitatem, sic ea tempestate plebem ex secundis rebus insolentia 
 ceperat. 
 
 = P. 295. 
 
109 B.C.] THE MAMILIAN COMMISSION 379 
 
 made in his defence did not save him from being the first occupant 
 of a priestly office to be condemned in a criminal court at B-ome.^ 
 
 We do not know the number of criminals discovered by the 
 Mamilian courts, and perhaps only the names of their more promin- 
 ent victims have been preserved. The worldly position of these 
 victims may, however, have saved others of lesser note, and the 
 dignity of the sacrifice may have been regarded in the fortunate 
 light of a compensation for its limited extent The object of the 
 people and of their present agents, the knights, so far as a rational 
 object can be discerned in such a carnival of rage and vengeance, 
 was to teach a severe lesson to the governing class. Their full 
 purpose had been attained when the lesson had been taught. It 
 was not their intention, any more than it had been that of Caius 
 Gracchus, to usurp the administrative functions of government or 
 to attempt to wrest the direction of foreign administration out of 
 the senate's hands. The time for that further step might not be 
 long in coming ; but for the present both the lower and middle 
 classes halted just at the point where destructive might have given 
 place to constructive energy. The leaders of the people may have 
 felt the entire lack of the organisation requisite for detailed adminis- 
 tration, and the right man who might replace the machine had 
 not yet been found ; while the knights may, in addition to these 
 convictions, have been influenced by their characteristic dislike of 
 pushing a popular movement to an extreme which would remove it 
 from the guidance of the middle class. 
 
 The senate had indeed learnt a lesson, and from this time 
 onward the history of the Numidian war is simplified by the fact 
 that its progress was determined by strategic, not by political, 
 considerations. There is no thought of temporising with the 
 enemy ; the one idea is to reduce him to a condition of absolute 
 submission — a submission which it was known could be secured only 
 by the possession of his person. It is true that the conduct of the 
 
 ' Cic. Brut. 34. 128 Invidiosa lege Mamilia quaestio C. Galbam sacerdotem et 
 quattuor consulates, L. Bestiam, C. Catonem, Sp. Albinum civemque praestantissi- 
 mum L. Opimium, Gracchi interfectorem, a populo absolutum, cum is contra populi 
 studium stetisset, Gracchani judices sustulerunt. For the condemnation of Opimius 
 cf. pro Sest. 67, 140 ; for that of Galba, Brut. 33. 127. Here honour is paid to Galba's 
 speech in his defence (Extat ejus peroratio, qui epilogus dicitur : qui tanto in honore 
 pueris nobis erat, ut eum etiam edisceremus). Of Galba it is said (I.e.) Hie, qui in 
 collegio sacerdotum esset, primus p,ost Romam conditam judicio publico est con- 
 demnatus. He was perhaps a member of the college of pontiffs (Long Decline of 
 the Rom, Rep. i. p. 415). For the exile of Cato at Tarraco see pro Balbo 11. 28). 
 
380 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 109 
 
 campaign became more than ever a party question ; but the party 
 struggle turned almost wholly on the military merit of the com- 
 mander sent to the scene of action, and although there was a 
 suspicion that the war was being needlessly prolonged for the 
 purpose of gratifying personal ambition, bhere was no hint of the 
 secret operation of influences that were wholly corrupt. Such a 
 suspicion was rendered impossible by the personality of the man who 
 now took over the conduct of the campaign. The tardily elected 
 consuls for the year were Quintus Caecilius Metellus and Marcus 
 Junius Silanus. Of these Metellus was to hold Numidia and Silanus 
 Gaul.i It is possible that, in the counsels of the previous year, con- 
 siderations of the Numidian campaign may to some extent have 
 determined the election of Metellus ; the senate may have welcomed 
 the candidature of a man of approved probity, although not of 
 approved military skill, for the purpose of obviating the chance of 
 another scandal ; and the people may in the same spirit have now 
 ratified his election. But, when we remember the almost mechanical 
 system of advancement to the higher offices which prevailed at this 
 time, it is equally possible that Metellus's day had come, that the 
 senate was fortunate rather than prescient in its choice of a servant, 
 and that, although the people in their present temper would pro- 
 ably have rejected a suspicious character, they accepted rather than 
 chose Metellus. The existing system did not even make it possible 
 to elect a man who would certainly have the conduct of the African 
 war ; and if we suppose that in this particular case the division of 
 the consular provinces did not depend on the unadulterated use of 
 the lot, but was settled by agreement or by a mock sortition,^ the 
 probity rather than the genius of Metellus must have determined 
 the choice, for Silanus was assigned a task of far more vital import- 
 ance to the welfare of Rome and Italy. 
 
 The repute of Metellus was based on the fact that, although an 
 aristocrat and a staunch upholder of the privileges of his order, he 
 
 1 Sail. Jug. 43. I ; Liv. Ep. Ixv. 
 
 " Sallust's language (Jug. 43. i) is indeterminate, but suggests the use of the 
 lot — Metellus et Silanus consules designati provincias inter se partiverant, Metel- 
 loque Numidia evenerat. There are instances in later times of a manipulation of 
 thtsortitio. See Cic. ad Fam. V. 2. 3 ; o(f Att. i. 16. 8. This assignment of the 
 provinces followed the treaty of Aulus (I.e.), i.e. it took place early in 109, but not 
 in the very first months of that year, as Spurius Albinus had gone back to Africa as 
 proconsul (p. 373). As we havg seen (p. 369) there is no probability that the con- 
 suls of 109 were elected in no. Sallust's words (I.e.) " consules designati " simply 
 mean " appointed consuls " and have no reference to the usual status of " consuls 
 designate ". 
 
109 B.C.] METELLUS 381 
 
 was honest in his motives and, so far at least as civic politics were 
 concerned, straightforward in his methods. Rome was reaching a 
 stage at which the dramatic probity of Hellenic annals, as exempli- 
 fied by the names of an Aristeides or a Xenocrates, could be em- 
 ployed as a measure to exalt one member of a government among 
 his fellows ; the incon'uptibility which had so lately been the com- 
 mon property of all,^ had become the monopoly of a few, and 
 Metellus was a witness to the folly of a caste which had not recog- 
 nised the policy of honesty. The completeness with which the 
 prize for character might be won, was shown by the attitude 
 of a jury before which he had been impeached on a charge of 
 extortion. Even the jealous Equites did not deign to glance at 
 the account -books which were handed in, but pronounced an im- 
 mediate verdict of acquittal.^ But the merely negative virtue of 
 unassailability by grossly corrupting influences could not have been 
 the only source of the equable repute which Metellus enjoyed 
 amongst the masses. It was but one of the signs of the self-sufficient 
 directness, repose and courtesy, which marked the better type of the 
 new nobility, of a life that held so much that it needed not to grasp 
 at more, of the protecting impulse and the generosity which, in the 
 purer type of minds constricted by conservative prejudices, is an out- 
 come of the conviction of the unbridgeable gulf that separates the 
 classes. The nobility of Metellus was wholly in his favour ; it jus- 
 tified the senate while it hypnotised the people. The man who was 
 now consul and would probably within a short space of time attach 
 the name of a conquered nationality to his own, was but fulfilling 
 the accepted destiny of his family. Metellus could show a father, 
 a brother, an uncle and four cousins, all of whom had held the con- 
 sulship. Since the middle of the second century titles drawn from 
 three conquered peoples had become appellatives of branches of his 
 race. His uncle had derived a name from Macedon, a cousin from 
 the Baliares, his own elder brother from the Dalmatians. It re- 
 mained to see whether the best-loved member of this favoured race 
 would be in a position to add to the family names the imposing 
 designation of Numidicus. 
 
 Metellus was a man of intellect and energy as well as of char- 
 
 • Polyb. vi. 56. 
 
 " Cic. pro Balbo 5. ii; ad Att. i. i6. 4; Val. Max. ii. 10. i. It is supposed 
 that Sicily may have been the province, which he had governed as propraetor, and 
 from which he had returned when he was subjected to this trial. See Druraann 
 Gesch, Roms. ii." p. 31. 
 
382 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 109 
 
 acter,! and he showed himself sufficiently exempt from the prejudices 
 of his caste, and sufficiently conscious of the seriousness of the work in 
 hand, to choose real soldiers, not diplomatists or ornamental warriors, 
 as his lieutenants. If the restiveness of Marius had left a dis- 
 turbing memory behind, it was judiciously forgotten by the consul, 
 who drew the proteg^ of his family from the uncongenial atmosphere 
 of the city to render services in the field, and to teach an ambitious 
 and somewhat embittered man that each act of skill and gallantry 
 was performed for the glory of his superior. Another of his legates 
 was Publius Rutilius Rufus, who like Marius had held the praetor- 
 ship, and was not only a man of known probity and firmness of 
 character, but a scientific student of tactics with original ideas which 
 were soon to be put to the test in the reorganisation of the army 
 which followed the Numidian war. For the present it was necessary 
 to create rather than reorganise an army, and Metellus in his haste 
 had no time for the indulgence of original views. The reports of 
 the forces at present quartered in the African province were not 
 encouraging ; and every means had to be taken to find new soldiers 
 and fresh supplies. A vigorous levy was cheerfully tolerated by the 
 enthusiasm of the community ; the senate showed its earnestness by 
 voting ample sums for the purchase of arms, horses, siege implements 
 and stores. Renewed assistance was sought from, and voluntarily 
 rendered by, the Latins and Italian allies, while subject kings proved 
 their loyalty by sending auxiliary forces of their own free will.'' 
 When Metellus deemed his preparations complete, he sailed for his 
 province amidst the highest hopes. They were hopes based on the 
 probity of a single man; for the impression still prevailed that 
 Roman arms were invincible and had been -vanquished only by the 
 new vices of the Roman character. Such hopes are not always the 
 best omen for a commander to take with him; a joy in the present, 
 they are likely to prove an embarrassment in the immediate future. 
 
 1 Acri viro et, quamquara advorso populi partium, fama tamen aequabili et 
 inviolata (Sail. jfug. 43. i). 
 
 2 Ibid. 43. 4. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE delay in his own appointment to the consulship, and the 
 length of time required for collecting his supplementary 
 forces and their supplies, had robbed Metellus of some of 
 the best months of the year when he set foot on African soil ; but 
 his patience was to be put to a further test, for the most casual 
 survey of what had been the army of the proconsul Albinus showed 
 the impossibility of taking the field for some considerable time.^ 
 What he had heard was nothing to what he saw. The military 
 spirit had vanished with discipline, and its sole survivals were a 
 tendency to plunder the peaceful subjects of the province and a 
 habit of bandying words with superior officers. The camp estab- 
 lished by Aulus for his beaten army had hardly ever been moved, 
 except when sanitary reasons or a lack of forage rendered a short 
 migration unavoidable. It had developed the character of a highly 
 disorderly town, the citizens of which had nothing to do except to 
 traffic for the small luxuries of life, to enjoy them when they were 
 secured, and, in times when money and good things were scarce, to 
 spread in bands over the surrounding country, make predatory 
 raids on the fields and viUas of the neighbourhood, and return with 
 the spoils of war, whether beasts or slaves, driven in flocks before 
 them. The trader who haunts the footsteps of the bandit was a 
 familiar figure in the camp ; he could be found everywhere exchang- 
 ing his foreign wine and the other amenities in which he dealt for 
 the booty wrung from the provincials. Since discipline was dead 
 and there was no enemy to fear, even the most ordinary military 
 precautions had ceased to be observed. The ramparts were falling 
 to pieces, the regular appointment and relief of sentries had been 
 abandoned, and the common soldier absented himself from his 
 company as often and for as long a period as he pleased. 
 
 1 Sail. Jug. 44. Cf. Val. Max. ii. 7. 2 ; Frontin. Strat. iv. i. 2. 
 
 (383) 
 
A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 109 
 
 ' Metellus had to face the task which had confronted Scipio at 
 Numantia. He performed it as effectually and perhaps with greater 
 gentleness ; for the most singular feature in the methods by which 
 he restored discipline was his avoidance of all attempts at terrorism.^ 
 The moderation and restraint, which had won the hearts of the 
 citizens, worked their magic even in the disorganised rabble which 
 he was remodelling into an army. The habits of obedience were 
 readily resumed when the tones of a true commander were heard, 
 and the way for their resumption was prepared by the regulations 
 which abolished all the incentives to the luxurious indolence which 
 he had found prevalent in the camp. The sale of cooked food was 
 forbidden, the camp followers were swept away, and no private 
 soldier was allowed the use of a slave or beast of burden whether in 
 quarters or on the march. Other edicts of the same kind followed, 
 and then the work of active training began. Every day the camp 
 was broken up and pitched again after a cross-country march; 
 rampart and ditch were formed and pickets set as though the 
 enemy was hovering near, and the general and staff went their 
 rounds to see that every precaution of real warfare was observed. 
 On the line of march Metellus was everywhere, now in the van, 
 now with the rearguard, now with the central column. His eye 
 criticised every disposition and detected every departure from the 
 rules ; he saw that each soldier kept his line, that he filled his due 
 place in the serried ranks that gathered round a standard, that he 
 bore the appropriate burden of his food and weapons. Metellus 
 preferred the removal of the opportunities for vice to the vindictive 
 chastisement of the vicious ; his wise and temperate measures pro- 
 duced a healthy state of mind and body with no loss of self-respect, 
 and in a short time he possessed an army, strong in physique as in 
 morale, which he might now venture to move against the foe. 
 
 Jugurtha had shown no inclination to follow up his success by 
 active measures against the defeated Roman army, even after he 
 had learnt the repudiation of his treaty with Aulus and knew that 
 the state of war had been resumed. The miserable condition of 
 the forces in the African province, of which he must have been fully 
 aware, must have offered an inviting object of attack, and a sudden 
 raid across the borders might have enabled him to dissipate the 
 
 1 Sed in ea difficultate Metellum non minus quam in rebus hostilibus magnum 
 et sapientem virum fuisse conperior : tanta temperantia inter ambitionem saeviti- 
 amque moderatum . . . Ita prohibendo a delictis magis quam vindicando exercitum 
 brevi confirmavit (Sail. jfug. 45). 
 
109 B.C.] METELLUS IN NUMIDIA 385 
 
 last relics of Roman military power in Africa. But he was now, as 
 ever, averse to pushing matters to extremes, he declined to figure 
 as an aggressive enemy of the Roman power ; and to give a pretext 
 for a war which could have no issue but his own extinction, would 
 be to surrender the chances of compromise which his own position 
 as a client king and the possibilities, however lessened, of working 
 on the fears or cupidity of members of the Roman administration 
 still afforded him. His strength lay in defensive operations of an 
 elusive kind, not in attack ; the less cultivated and accessible por- 
 tions of his own country furnished the best field for a desultory 
 and protracted war, and he seems still to have looked forward to a 
 compromise to which weariness of the wasteful struggle might in 
 the course of time invite his enemies. He may even have had some 
 knowledge of the embarrassments of the Republic in other quarters 
 of the world, and believed that both the unwillingness of Rome to 
 enter into the struggle, and her eagerness, when she had entered, to 
 see it brought to a rapid close, were to some extent due to a feeling 
 that an African war would divert resources that were sorely needed 
 for the defence of her European possessions. 
 
 The king's confidence in the weakness and half-heartedness of 
 the Roman administration is said to have been considerably shaken 
 by the news that Metellus was in command.^ During his own 
 residence in Rome he may have heard of him as the prospective 
 consul ; he had at any rate learnt the very unusual foundations on 
 which Metellus's influence with his peers and with the people was 
 based, and knew to his chagrin that these were unshakable. The 
 later news from the province was equally depressing. The new 
 commander was not only honest but efficient, and the shattered 
 forces of Rome were regaining the stability that had so often re- 
 placed or worn out the eflbrts of genius. Delicate measures were 
 necessary to resist this combination of innocence and strength, and 
 Jugurtha began to throw out the tentacles of diplomacy. The 
 impression which he meant to produce, and actually did produce 
 on the mind of the historian who has left us the fullest record of 
 the war, was that of a genuine desire to effect a surrender of him- 
 self which should no longer be fictitious, and to throw himself almost 
 unreservedly on the meccy_Qt the Roman people.^ But Jugurtha 
 
 1 Sail. Jug. 46. I. 
 
 " Jugurtha . . . diffidere suis rebus ac turn demum veram deditionem facere 
 conatus est (/iid.). 
 
 25 
 
A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 109 
 
 was in the habit of exhibiting the most expansive trust, based on a 
 feeling of his own utter helplessness, at the beginning of his nego- 
 tiations, and of then seeming to permit his fears to get the better 
 of his confidence. He was an experimental psychologist who held 
 out vivid hopes in the belief that the craving once excited would 
 be ultimately satisfied with less than the original offer, while the 
 physical and mental retreat would meanwhile divert his victim from 
 military preparations or lead him to incautious advances. It must 
 have been in some such spirit that he assailed Metellus with offers so 
 extreme in their humility that their good faith must have aroused 
 suspicion in any mind where innocence did not imply simplicity of 
 character, as Jugurtha perhaps hoped that it did in the case of 
 this novel type of Roman official. The Numidian envoys promised 
 absolute submission ; even the crown was to be surrendered, and 
 they stipulated only for the bare life of the king and his children.' 
 Metellus, convinced of the unreality of the promise, matched his 
 own treachery against that of the king. He had not the least 
 scruple in following the lead which the senate had given, and re- 
 garding Jugurtha as unworthy of the most rudimentary rights of a 
 belligerent. Believing that he had seen enough of the Numidian 
 type to be sure that its conduct was guided by no principles of 
 honour or constancy, and that its shifty imagination could be 
 influenced by the newest project that held out a hope of excite- 
 ment or of gain,^ he began in secret interviews with each individual 
 envoy, to tamper with his fidelity to the king. The subjects of 
 his interviews did not repudiate the suggestion, and adopted an 
 attitude of ready attention which invited further confidences. It 
 might have been an attitude which in these subtle minds denoted 
 unswerving loyalty to their master ; but Metellus interpreted it in 
 the light of his own desires, and proceeded to hold out hopes of 
 great reward to each of the envoys if Jugurtha was handed over 
 into his power; he would prefer to have the king alive; but, if 
 that was impossible, the surrender of his dead body would be re- 
 warded. He then gave in public a message which he thought might 
 be acceptable to their master. It is sufficiently probable that the 
 private dialogues no less than the public message were imparted to 
 Jugurtha's ear by messengers who now had unexampled means of 
 
 ■ ' Sail. Jug. 46. ^. 
 
 • ' Sed Metello jam antea experimentis cognitum erat genus Numidarum infidum, 
 ingenio mobili, novarum rerum avidura esse (Ibid, 46. 3). 
 
109 B.C.] FIRST CAMPAIGN OF METELLUS 387 
 
 proving their fidelity and each of whom may have attempted to 
 show that his loyalty was superior to that of his fellows ; incentives 
 to frankness had certainly been supplied by Metellus ; but this 
 frankness may have been itself of value to the Roman commander. 
 It would prove to Jugurtha the presence of a resolute and un- 
 scrupulous man who aimed at nothing less than his capture and 
 with whom further parleyings would be waste of time. 
 
 A few days later Metellus entered Numidia with an army 
 marching with all the vigilance which a hostile territory demands, 
 and prepared in the perfected carefulness of its organisation to 
 meet the surprises which the enemy had in store. The surprise 
 that did await it was of a novel character.^ The grimly aiTayed 
 column found itself forging through a land which presented the un- 
 disturbed appearance of peace, security and comfort. The confident 
 peasant was found in his homestead or tilling his lands, the cattle 
 grazed on the meadows ; when an open village or a fortified town 
 was reached, the army was met by the headman or governor repre- 
 senting the king. This obliging official was wholly at the disposal 
 of the Roman general ; he was ready to supply corn to the army 
 or to accumulate supplies at any base that might be chosen by the 
 commander; any order that he gave would be faithfully carried 
 out. But Metellus's vigilance was not for a moment shaken by this 
 bloodless triumph. He interpreted the ostentatious submission as 
 the first stage of an intended ambush, and he continued his cautious 
 progress as though the enemy were hovering on his flank. His line 
 of march was as jealously guarded as before, his scouts still rode 
 abroad to examine and report on the safety of the route. The 
 general himself led the van, which was formed of cohorts in light 
 marching order and a select force of slingers and archers ; Marius 
 with the main body of cavalry brought up the rear, and either 
 flank was protected by squadrons of auxiliary horse that had been 
 placed at the disposal of the tribunes in charge of the legions and 
 the prefects who commanded the divisions of the contingents from 
 the allies. With these squadrons were mingled light-armed troops, 
 their joint function being to repel any sudden assault from the 
 mobile Numidian cavalry. Every forward step inspired new fears 
 of Jugurtha's strategic craft and knowledge of the ground ; where- 
 ever the king might be, his subtle influence oppressed the trespasser 
 
 1 Sail. Jug. 46. 5. 
 
388 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 109 
 
 on any part of his domains, and the most peaceful scene appeared 
 to the anxious eyes of the Roman commander to be fraught with 
 the most terrible perils of war. 
 
 The route taken by Metellus may have been the familiar line 
 of advance from the Roman province, down the valley of the 
 Bagradas. But before following the upper course of that river 
 into the heart of Numidia, he deemed it necessary to make a de- 
 flection to the north, and secure his communications by seizing and 
 garrisoning the town of Vaga, the most important of the Eastern 
 cities of Jugurtha.i Its position near the borders of the Roman 
 province had made it the greatest of Numidian market towns, and 
 it had once been the home, and the seat of the industry, of a great 
 number of Italian traders.^ We may suppose that by this time the 
 merchants had fled from the insecure locality and that the foreign 
 trade of the town had passed away ; but both the site of the city 
 and the character of its inhabitants attracted the attention of 
 Metellus. The latter, like the Eastern Numidians generally, were 
 a receptive and industrious folk, who knew the benefits that peace 
 and contact with Rome conferred on commerce, and might there- 
 fore be induced to throw oflP their allegiance to Jugurtha. The site 
 suggested a suitable basis for supplies and, if adequately protected, 
 might again invite the merchant. Metellus, therefore, placed a 
 garrison in the town, ordered corn and other necessaries to be 
 stored within its walls, and saw in the concourse of the merchant 
 class a promise of constant supplies for his forces and a tower of 
 strength for the maintenance of Roman influence in Numidia when 
 the work of pacification had been done. The slight delay was 
 utilised by Jugurtha in his characteristic manner. The seizure of 
 one of his most important cities offered an occasion or pretext for 
 fresh terrors. Metellus was beset by grovelling envoys with re- 
 newed entreaties ; peace was sought at any price short of the life of 
 the king and his children ; all else was to be surrendered. The con- 
 sul still pursued his cherished plan of tampering with the fidelity 
 of the messengers and sending them home with vague promises. 
 
 ^ P. 351. 
 
 " Sail. Jug. i,i. 1 Oppidum Numidarum nomine Vaga, forum rerum venalium 
 totius regni maxume celebratum, ubi et incolere et mercari consueverant Italici 
 generis multi mortales. Sallust does not say that Italian merchants were still in 
 the town. Their presence in Numidian cities since the massacre at Cirta may be 
 doubted, although the fact that the town was so near the province may have 
 mastered the fears of some of the traders. 
 
109 B.C.] FIRST CAMPAIGN OF METELLUS 389 
 
 He would not cut oiF Jugurtha from all hope of a compromise. He 
 may have believed that he was paralysing the king's efforts while 
 he continued his steady advance, and turning his enemy's favourite 
 weapon against that enemy himself. Perhaps he even let his 
 thoughts dally with the hope that the envoys who had proved such 
 facile traitors might find some means of redeeming their promises.^ 
 But, unless he committed the cardinal mistake of misreading or 
 undervaluing his opponent, these could have been but secondary 
 hopes. He must have known that to penetrate into Western 
 Numidia without a serious battle, or at least without an effort of 
 Jugurtha to harass his march or to cut his communications, was 
 an event beyond the reach of purely human aspiration. 
 
 Jugurtha had on his part framed a plan of resistance complete 
 in every detaiL The site in which the attempt was to be made was 
 visited and its military features were appraised in all their bearings ; 
 the events which would succeed each other in a few short hours 
 could be predicted as surely as one could foretell the regular move- 
 ments of a machine ; the Roman general was walking into a trap 
 from which there should be no escape but death. The framing 
 of Jugurtha's scheme necessarily depended on his knowledge of 
 Metellus's line of march. We do not know how soon the requisite 
 data came to hand ; but there is little reason for believing that his 
 plan was a resolution of despair or forced on him as a last resort, 
 except in the sense that he would always rather treat than fight, 
 and that to inflict disaster on a Roman army was no part of the 
 policy which he deemed most desirable. But, since his ideal plan 
 had stumbled on the temperament of Metellus, a check to the 
 invading army became imperative.^ The sacrifice of Vaga could 
 scarcely have weighed heavily on his mind, for it was an integral 
 element in any rational scheme of defence ; but, even apart from 
 the obvious consideration that a king must fight if he cannot treat 
 for his crown, the thought of his own prestige may now have 
 urged him to combat. Unbounded as the faith of his Numidian 
 subjects was, it might not everywhere survive the impression made 
 by the unimpeded and triumphant march of the Roman legions. 
 
 Metellus when he quitted Vaga had continued to operate in 
 the eastern part of Numidia. The theatre of his campaign was 
 probably to be the territory about the plateau of Vaga and the 
 
 1 Sail. yug. 47. 4. 
 
 ' Ibid. 48. I Coactus rerutn necessitudine statuit armis certare. 
 
390 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 109 
 
 Great Plains, its ultimate prizes perhaps were to be the important 
 Numidian towns of Sicca Veneria and Zama Regia to the south. 
 The nature of the country rendered it impossible for him to enter 
 the defiles of the Bagradas from the north-west, while it was equally 
 impossible for him to march direct from Vaga to Sicca, for the road 
 was blocked by the mountains which intervened on his south-eastern 
 side. To reach the neighbourhood of Sicca it was necessary to 
 turn to the south-west and follow for a time the upward course of 
 the river Muthul (the Wad Mellag). By this route he would 
 reach the high plateaux, which command on the south-east the 
 plains of Sicca and Zama, on the north-west those of Naraggara 
 and Thagaste, on the south those of Thala and Theveste.' 
 Metellus's march led him over a mountain height which was some 
 miles from the river.^ The western side of this height, down which 
 the Roman army must descend, although of some steepness at the 
 beginning of its declivity, did not terminate in a plain, but was 
 continued by a swelling rise, of vast and even slope, which found 
 
 ^ Tissot Geographie comparie i. pp. 67-68. I have followed Tissot in his 
 identification of the Muthul with the Wad Mellag. This view makes Metellus's 
 efforts concentrate for the time on S.E. Numidia. He intended to secure his com- 
 munications before proceeding farther, whether south or west. The older view, 
 which identified the Muthul with the Ubus (Manner! and Forbiger) would represent 
 Metellus as opening his campaign in the direction of Hippo Regius — Western 
 Numidia would thus be his object and the subsequent campaign about Zama would 
 indicate a change of plan. This is not an impossible view ; but there are other 
 indications which favour the hypothesis that the Muthul is the Wad Mellag. One 
 is that Sicca in its neighbourhood veered round to the Romans after the battle 
 (Sail. jfug. 56. 3). The other is the alleged suitability of this region to the topo- 
 graphical description given by Sallust. Tissot believed that every step in the great 
 battle could be traced on the ground. The " mons tractu pari " is the Djebel 
 Hemeur mta Ouargha, parallel to the course of the Wad Mellag and extending 
 from the Djebel Sara to the Wad Zouatin. The hill projected by this chain per- 
 pendicularly to the river is the Koudiat Abd Allah, which detaches itself from the 
 central block of the Djebel Hemeur and the direction of which is perpendicular both 
 to the mountain and to the Wad Mellag. The plain, waterless and desert in the 
 angle formed by the hill and the mountain but inhabited and cultivated in the 
 neighbourhood of the Muthul, is the Feid-es-Smar, watered in its lower part by two 
 streams which empty into the Wad Mellag. The distance, however, which separates 
 Djebel Hemeur from the left bank of the Wad Mellag, is not twenty (the number 
 given by the MSS. of Sallust) but about seven miles. S. Reinach in his edition of 
 Tissot has not reproduced the author's own sketch of the battle of the Muthul, but 
 a map of the district will be found in the Atlas appended to the work (Map xviii., 
 Medjerda sup^rieure). This map forms the basis of the one which I have given. 
 
 =iSee note i. One must agree with Tissot that the " ferme milia passuum 
 vigmti " of Sallust (Jug. 48. 3) cannot be accepted. Such a distance is impossible 
 from a strategic point of view, as Metellus could never have sent his vanguard such 
 a distance in advance, when he himself was engaged with the enemy. It is also 
 inconsistent with the account of the battle, the details of which obviously show that 
 It took place in a much smaller area. The actual distance between the conjectured 
 sites is about seven Roman miles (note i. See Tissot op. cit. i. p. 71). 
 
The Wad 
 
 and 
 SURROUNHINO 
 
109 B.C.] BATTLE OF THE MUTHUL 391 
 
 its eastern termination on the river's bank. The greater portion of 
 this great hill, and especially that part of it which lay nearest to 
 the mountain, was covered by a sparse and low vegetation, such as 
 the wild olive and the myrtle, which was all that the parched and 
 sandy soil would yield. There was no water nearer than the river, 
 and this had made the hill a desert so far as human habitation was 
 concerned. It was only on its eastern slope which touched the 
 stream that the presence of man was again revealed by thick-set 
 orchards and cattle grazing in the fields.^ 
 
 Jugurtha's plan was based on the necessity which would con- 
 front the Romans of crossing this arid slope to reach the river. 
 Could he spring on them as they left the mountain chain and 
 detain them in this torrid wilderness, nature might do even more 
 than the Numidian arms to secure a victory ; meanwhile measures 
 might be taken to close the passage to the river, and to bring up 
 fresh forces from the east to block the desired route while the am- 
 bushed army was harassed by attacks from the flank and rear. 
 
 Jugurtha himself occupied the portion of the slope which lay 
 just beneath the mountain. He kept under his own command the 
 whole of the cavalry and a select body of foot-soldiers, probably 
 of a light and mobile character such as would assist the operations 
 of the horse. These he placed in an extended line on the flank of 
 the route that must be followed by an army descending from the 
 mountain. The line was continued by the forces which he had 
 placed under the command of Bomilcar. These consisted of the 
 heavier elements of the Numidian army, the elephants of war and 
 the major part of the foot soldiers. It is, however, probable that 
 there was a considerable interval between the end of Jugurtha's and 
 the beginning of Bomilcar's line.^ The latter on its eastern side 
 extended to a point at no great distance from the river ; and ac- 
 cording to the original scheme of the ambush the function assigned 
 to Bomilcar must have been that of executing a turning movement 
 which would prevent the Roman forces from gaining the stream. 
 As it was expected that the impact of the heavy Roman troops 
 would be chiefly felt in this direction, the sturdier and less mobile 
 portions of the Numidian army had been placed under Bomilcar's 
 command. 
 
 1 Sail. Jug. 48. 
 
 "^ This appears from the narrative in Ibid. 52. 5. Even virhen Jugurtha had 
 advanced some distance to the river, Bomilcar was not actually in touch with the 
 king's forces. 
 
392 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 109 
 
 Metellus was soon seen descending the mountain slope,i and 
 there seemed at first a chance that the Roman column might be 
 surprised along its length by the sudden onset of Jugurtha's hoi-se. 
 But the vigilant precautions which Metellus observed during his 
 whole line of march, although they could not in this case avert 
 a serious danger, possibly lessened the peril of the moment. His 
 scouts seem to have done their work and spied the half-concealed 
 Numidians amongst the low trees and brushwood. The superior 
 position of the Roman army must in any case soon have made this 
 knowledge the common property of all, unless we consider that 
 some ridge of the chain concealed Jugurtha's ambush from the 
 view of the Roman army until they should have almost left the 
 mountain for the lower hill beneath it. Jugurtha must in any case 
 have calculated on the probability of the forces under his own com- 
 mand soon becoming visible to the enemy, for perfect concealment 
 was impossible amidst the stunted trees which formed the only 
 cover for his men.'^ The efficacy of his plan did not depend on the 
 completeness or suddenness of the surprise ; it depended still more 
 on Jugurtha's knowledge of the needs of a Roman army, and on the 
 state of perplexity into which all that was visible of the ambush 
 would throw the commander. For the little that was seen made 
 it difficult to interpret the size, equipment and intentions of the 
 expectant force. Glimpses of horses and men could just be caught 
 over the crests of the low trees or between the interlacing boughs. 
 Both men and horses were motionless, and the eye that strove to 
 see more was baffled by the scrub which concealed more than it re- 
 vealed, and by the absence of the standards of war which might 
 have affijrded some estimate of the nature and size of the force and 
 had for this reason been carefully hidden by Jugurtha. 
 
 But enough was visible to prove the intended ambush. Metellus 
 called a short halt and rapidly changed his marching column to a 
 battle formation capable of resistance or attack. His right flank 
 was the one immediately threatened. It was here accordingly that 
 he formed the front of his order of battle, when he changed his 
 marching column into a fighting line.'^ The three ranks were formed 
 in the traditional manner ; the spaces between the maniples were 
 filled by slingers and archers ; the whole of the cavalry was placed 
 
 1 Sail. Jug. 49. 4. 
 
 ' Ibid. 49. 6 Ibi conmutatis ordinibus in dextero latere, quod proxumum hostia 
 erat, triplicibus subsidiis aciem instruxit. 
 
109 B.C.] BATTLE OF THE MUTHUL 393 
 
 on the flanks. It is possible that at this point the line of descent 
 from the mountain would cause the Roman army to present an 
 oblique front to the slope and the distant river,^ and the cavalry on 
 the left wing would be at the head of the marching column, if it 
 descended into the lower ground.^ Such a descent was immedi- 
 ately resolved on by Metellus. To halt on the heights was impos- 
 sible, for the land was waterless ; an orderly retreat was perhaps 
 discountenanced by the difficulties of the country over which he 
 had just passed and the distance of the last watering-place which 
 he had left, while to retire at the first sight of the longed-for 
 foe would not have inspired his newly remodelled army with much 
 confidence in themselves or their general. 
 
 When the army had quitted the foot of the mountain, a new 
 problem faced its general. The Numidians remained motionless,' 
 and it became clear that no rapid attack that could be as suddenly 
 repulsed was contemplated by their leader. Metellus saw instead 
 the prospect of a series of harassing assaults that would delay his 
 progress, and he dreaded the fierceness of the season more than the 
 weapons of the enemy. The day was still young, for Jugurtha had 
 meant to call in the alliance of a torrid sun, and Metellus saw in 
 his mind's eye his army, worn by thirst, heat and seven miles of 
 harassing combat, still struggling with the Numidian cavalry while 
 they strove to form a camp at the river which was the bourne of 
 their desires. It was all important that the extreme end of the 
 slope which touched the river should be seized at once, and a camp 
 be formed, or be in process of formation, by the time that his tired 
 army arrived. With this object in view he sent on his legate Ru- 
 tilius with some cohorts of foot soldiers in light marching order and 
 a portion of the cavalry. The movement was well planned, for by 
 the nature of the case it could not be disturbed by Jugurtha. His 
 object was to harry the main body of the army and especially the 
 heavy infantry, and his refusal to detach any part of his force in 
 pursuit of the swiftly moving Rutilius is easily understood, especi- 
 ally when it is remembered that Bomilcar was stationed near to the 
 ground which the Roman legate was to seize. An attack on the 
 
 ^ Sail. Jug. 49. 6 Sicuti instruxerat, transvorsis principiis in planum deducit. 
 The word " transvorsis " here probably refers to the direction in which the front 
 rank faced the enemy, and the position may be described in another way by 
 saying that Metellus marched with his front rank sideways to Jugurtha. See 
 Summers in loc. 
 
 2 Ibid. 50. -s. ' Ibid. 50. I. 
 
A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 109 
 
 flying column would also have led to the general engagement which 
 Metellus wished to provoke. The presence of Bomilcar and his 
 force was probably unknown to the Romans. He in his turn must 
 have been surprised, and may have been somewhat embarrassed, by 
 Rutilius's advance ; but the movement did not induce him to aban- 
 don his position. To oppose Rutilius would have been to surrender 
 the part assigned him in the intended operations against the main 
 Roman force ; and, if this part wa^ now rendered difficult or impos- 
 sible by the presence of the Romans in his rear, he might yet divide 
 the forces of the enemy, and assist Jugurtha by keeping Rutilius 
 and his valuable contingents of cavalry in check. He therefore 
 permitted the legate to pass him ^ and waited for the events which 
 were to issue from the combat farther up the field. 
 
 Metellus meanwhile continued his slow advance, keeping the 
 marching order which had been observed in the descent from the 
 mountain. He himself headed the column, riding with the cavalry 
 that covered the left wing, while Marius, in command of the horse- 
 men on the right, brought up the rear.^ Jugurtha waited until the 
 last man of the Roman column had crossed the beginning ^of his 
 line, and then suddenly threw about two thousand of his infantry 
 up the slope of the mountain at the point where Metellus had made 
 his descent. His idea was to cut off the retreat of the Romans and 
 prevent their regaining the most commanding position in the field. 
 He then gave the signal for a general attack. The battle which 
 followed had all the characteristic features of all such contests 
 between a light and active cavalry force and an army composed 
 mainly of heavy infantry, inferior in mobility but unshakable in its 
 compact strength. There was no possibility of the Numidians 
 piercing the Roman ranks, but there was more than a possibility 
 of their wearing down the strength of every Roman soldier before 
 that weary march to the river had even neared its completion. 
 The Roman defence must have been hampered by the absence of 
 that portion of the cavalry which had accompanied Rutilius ; 
 it was more sorely tried by the dazzling sun, the floating dust and 
 the intolerable heat. The Numidians hung on the rear and either 
 flank, cutting down the stragglers and essaying to break the order 
 of the Roman ranks on every side. It was of the utmost difficulty 
 to preserve this order, and the braver spirits who preferred the 
 
 1 Sail. fug. 52. 5. 2 Ibid. 50. 2. 
 
109 B.C.] BATTLE OF THE MUTHUL 395 
 
 security of their ranks to reckless and indiscriminate assault, were 
 maddened by blows, inflicted by the missiles of their adversaries, 
 which they were powerless to return. Nor could the repulse of the 
 enemy be followed by an' effective pursuit. Jugurtha had taught 
 his cavalry to scatter in their retreat when pursued by a hostile 
 band ; and thus, when unable to hold their ground in the first 
 quarter which they had selected for attack, they melted away only 
 to gather like clouds on the flank and rear of pursuers who had now 
 severed themselves from the protecting structure of their ranks. 
 Even the difficulties of the ground favoured the mobile tactics of 
 the assailants ; for the horses of the Numidians, accustomed to the 
 hill forests, could thread their way through the undergrowth at 
 points which offered an effective check to the pursuing Romans. 
 
 It seemed as though Jugurtha's plan was nearing its fulfilment. 
 The symmetry of the Roman column was giving place to a 
 straggling line showing perceptible gaps through which the enemy 
 had pierced. The resistance was becoming individual ; small com- 
 panies pursued or retreated in obedience to the dictates of their im- 
 mediate danger ; no single head could grasp the varied situation noi-, 
 if it had had power to do so, could it have issued commands capable 
 of giving uniformity to the sporadic combats in which attack and 
 resistance seemed to be directed by the blind chances of the moment. 
 But every minute of effectual resistance had been a gain to the 
 Romans. The ceaseless toil in the cruel heat was wearing down 
 the powers even of the natives ; the exertions of the latter, as the 
 attacking force, must have been far greater than those of the mass 
 of the Roman infantry ; and the Numidian foot soldiers in par- 
 ticular, who were probably always of an inferior quality to the 
 cavalry and had been obliged to strain their physical endurance to 
 the utmost by emulating the horsemen in their lightning methods 
 of attack and retreat, had become so utterly exhausted that a con- 
 siderable portion of them had practically retired from the field. 
 They had climbed to the higher ground, perhaps to join the forces 
 which Jugurtha had already placed near the foot of the mountain, 
 and were resting their weary limbs, probably not with any view of 
 shirking their arduous service but with a resolution of renewing the 
 attack when their vigoiu- had been restored. This withdrawal of a 
 large portion of the infantry was a cause, or a part, of a general 
 slackening of the Numidian attack ; and it was the breathing 
 space thus affbrded which gave Metellus his great chance. Gradu- 
 
396 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 109 
 
 ally he drew his straggling line together and restored some order 
 in the ranks ; and then with the instinct of a true general he took 
 active measures to assail his enemy's weakest point. This point 
 was represented by the Numidian infantry perched on the height. 
 Some of these were exhausted and perhaps dispirited, others it is 
 true were as yet untouched by the toil of battle ; but as a body 
 Metellus believed them wholly incapable of standing the shock of a 
 Roman charge. The confidence was almost forced on him by his 
 despair of any other solution of the intolerable situation. The 
 evening was closing in, his army had no camp or shelter ; even if it 
 were possible to guard against the dangers of the night, morning 
 would bring but a renewal of the same miserable toil to an army 
 worn by thirst, sleeplessness and anxiety. He, therefore, massed 
 four legionary cohorts against the Numidian infantry,^ and tried to 
 revive their shattered confidence by appealing at once to their 
 courage and to their despair, by pointing to the enemy in retreat 
 and by showing that their own safety rested wholly on the weapons 
 in their hands. For some time the Roman soldiers surveyed their 
 dangerous task and looked expectantly at the height that they were 
 asked to storm. The vague hope that the enemy would come down 
 finally disappeared ; the growing darkness filled them with resolute 
 despair ; and, closing their ranks, they rushed for the higher ground. 
 In a moment the Numidians were scattered and the height was 
 gained. So rapidly did the enemy vanish that but few of them were 
 slain ; their lightness of armour and knowledge of the ground saved 
 them from the swords of the pursuing legionaries. 
 
 The conquest of the height was the decisive incident of the 
 battle, and it was clearly a success that, considered in itself, was 
 due far more to radical and permanent military qualities than to 
 tactical skill. It may seem wholly a victory of the soldiers, in 
 which the general played no part, until we remember that strategic 
 and tactical considerations are dependent on a knowledge of such 
 permanent conditions, and that Metellus was as right in forcing his 
 Romans up the height as Jugurtha was wrong in believing that his 
 Numidians could hold it. With respect to the events occurring in 
 this quarter of the field, Metellus had saved himself from a strategic 
 disadvantage by a tactical success ; but even the strategic situation 
 could not be estimated wholly by reference to the events which had 
 
 > Sail. Jug. 51. 3. 
 
109 B.C.] BATTLE OF THE MUTHUL 397 
 
 just occurred or to the position in which the two armies were now 
 left. Had Bomilcar still been free to bar the passage to the river 
 and to join Jugurtha's forces during the night, the position of the 
 Romans would still have been exceedingly dangerous. But the 
 mission of Rutilius had successfully diverted that general's atten- 
 tion from what had been the main purpose of the original plan. 
 His leading idea was now merely to separate the two divisions of 
 the Roman army, and the thought of blocking the passage of 
 Metellus, although not necessarily abandoned, must have become 
 secondary to that of checking the advance of Rutilius when the 
 legate should have become alarmed at the delay in the progress of 
 his commander. Bomilcar, after he had permitted the Roman 
 force to pass him, slowly left the hill where he had been posted and 
 brought his men into more level ground,^ while Rutilius was 
 making all speed for the river. Quietly he changed his column 
 into a line of battle stretching across the slope which at this point 
 melted into the plain, while he learnt by constant scouting every 
 movement of the enemy beyond. He heard at length that Rutilius 
 had reached his bourne and halted, and at the same time the din of 
 the battle between Jugurtha and Metellus came in louder volumes 
 to his ear. The thought that Rutilius's attention was disengaged 
 now that his main object had been accomplished, the fear that he 
 might seek to bring help to his labouring commander, led Bomilcar 
 to take more active measures. His mind was now absorbed with 
 the problem of preventing a junction of the Roman forces. His 
 mistrust of the quality of the infantry under his command had 
 originally led him to form a line of considerable depth ; this he 
 now thought fit to extend with the idea of outflanking and cutting 
 off all chance of egress from the enemy. When all was ready he 
 advanced on Rutilius's camp.^ 
 
 The Romans were suddenly aware of a great cloud of dust which 
 hung over the plantations on their landward side ; but the inter- 
 vening trees hid all prospect of the slope beyond : and for a time 
 they looked on the pillar of dust as one of the strange sights of the 
 desert, a mere sand-cloud driven by the wind. Then they thought 
 that it betrayed a peculiar steadiness in its advance ; instead of 
 sweeping down in a wild storm it moved with the pace and regularity 
 
 1 Sail. Jug. 52. 5. 
 
 * Aciem quam diffidens virtuti militum arte statuerat, quo hostium itineri 
 officeret, latius porrigit eoque modo ad Rutili castra procedit (7J:d. 52. 6). 
 
398 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 109 
 
 of an army on the march ; and, in spite of its slow progress, it could 
 be seen to be drawing nearer and nearer. The truth burst upon 
 their minds; they seized then- weapons and, in obedience to the 
 order of their commander, drew up in battle formation before the 
 camp. As Bomilcar's force approached, the Romans shouted and 
 charged ; the Numidians raised a counter cheer and met the assault 
 half-way. There was scarcely a moment when the issue seemed 
 in doubt. The Romans, strong in cavalry, swept the untrained 
 Numidian infantry before them, and Bomilcar had by his incautious 
 advance thrown away the utility of that division of his army on 
 which he and his men placed their chief reliance. His elephants, 
 which were capable of manoeuvring only on open ground, had now 
 been advanced to the midst of wooded plantations, and the huge 
 animals were soon mixed up with the trees, struggling through the 
 branches and separated from their fellows.^ The Numidians made 
 a show of resistance until they saw the line of elephants broken and 
 the Roman soldiers in the rear of the protecting beasts ; then they 
 threw away their heavy armour and vanished from the spot, most 
 of them seeking the cover of the hills and nearly all secure in the 
 shelter of the coming night. The elephants were the chief victims 
 of the Roman pursuit ; four were captured and the forty that re- 
 mained were killed. 
 
 It had been a hard day's work for the victorious division. A 
 forced march had been followed by the labour of forming a camp 
 and this in turn by the toil of battle. But it was impossible to 
 think of rest. The delay of Metellus filled them with misgivings, 
 and they advanced through the darkness to seek news of the main 
 division with a caution that bespoke the prudent view that their 
 recent victory had not banished the evil possibilities of Numidian 
 guile.^ Metellus was advancing from the opposite direction and 
 the two armies met. Each division was suddenly aware of a force 
 moving against it under cover of the night ; with nerves so highly 
 strung as to catch at any fear each fancied an enemy in the other. 
 There was a shout and a clash of arms, as swords were drawn and 
 shields unstrung. It was fortunate that mounted scouts were riding 
 in advance of either army. These soon saw the welcome truth and 
 bore it to their companions. Panic gave place to joy ; as the com- 
 
 ' Sjll >£-. 53. 3. 
 , ".Sa- 5 Instructi intentique obviam procedunt. Nam dolus Numidarum 
 nihil languid! neque remissi patiebatur. 
 
109 B.C.] BATTLE OF THE MUTHUL 399 
 
 bined forces moved into camp, the soldiers' tongues were loosed, and 
 pent up feelings found expression in wonderful stories of individual 
 valour. 
 
 Metellus, as in duty bound, gave the name of victory to his 
 salvation from destruction. He was right in so far as an army that 
 has vanished may be held to have been beaten ; and his compliments 
 to his soldiers were certainly well deserved ; for the triumph, such 
 as it was, had been mainly that of the rank and file, and the Roman 
 legionary had not merely given evidence of the old qualities of 
 stubborn endurance which Metellus's training had restored, but 
 had proved himself vastly superior to anything in the shape of a 
 soldier of the line that Jugurtha could put into the field. The 
 commendation and thanks which the general expressed in his public 
 address to the whole army, the individual distinctions which he 
 conferred on those whose peculiar merit in the recent combats was 
 attested, were at once an apology for hai'dship, a recognition of de- 
 sert and a means of inspiring self-respect and future efficiency. If 
 it is true that Metellus added that glory was now satisfied, and 
 plunder should be their reward in future,^ he was at once indulging 
 in a pardonable hyperbole and veiling the unpleasant truth that 
 combats with Jugurtha were somewhat too expensive to attract his 
 future attention. His own private opinion of the recent events 
 was perhaps as carefully concealed in his despatches to the senate. 
 It was inevitable that a populace which had learnt to look on news 
 from Numidia as a record of compromise or disaster, should welcome 
 and exaggerate the cheering intelligence ; should not only glory in 
 the indisputable fact of the renewed excellence of their army, but 
 should regard Jugurtha as a fugitive and Metellus as master of his 
 land.^ It was equally natural that the senate should embrace the 
 chance of shaking olF the last relics of suspicion which clung to its 
 honour and competency by exalting the success of its general. It 
 decreed supplications to the immortal gods, and thus produced the 
 impression that a decisive victory had been won. Everywhere the 
 State displayed a pardonable joy mingled with a less justifiable 
 expectation that this was the beginning of the end. 
 
 1 Pro victoria satis jam pugnatura, reliquos labores pro praeda fore (Sail. Jug. 
 
 54- i)- 
 
 ^ Interim Romae gaudium ingens ortum cognitis Metelli rebus, ut seque et 
 exercitum more majorum gereret, in advorso loco victor tamen virtute fuisset, 
 hostium agro potiretur, Jugurtham magnificum ex Albini socordia spem salutis in 
 solitudine aut fuga coegisset habere (Ibid. 55. i). 
 
400 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 109 
 
 The man who raises extravagant hopes is only less happy than 
 the man who dashes them to the ground. The days that followed 
 the battle of the Muthul must have been an anxious time for Me- 
 tellus ; for he had been taught that it was necessary to change his 
 plan of campaign into a shape which was not likely to secure a 
 speedy termination of the war. For four days he did not leave 
 his camp — a delay which may have had the ostensible justification 
 of the necessity of caring for his wounded soldiers,^ and may even 
 have been based on the hope that negotiations for surrender 
 might reach him from the king, but which also proved his view 
 that the pursuit of Jugurtha was wholly impracticable, and that 
 in the case of a Numidian army capture or destruction was not 
 a necessary consequence of defeat. He contented himself with 
 making inquiries of fugitives and others as to the present position 
 and proceedings of the king, and received replies which may have 
 contained some elements of truth. He learnt that the Numidian 
 army which had fought at the Muthul had wholly broken up in ac- 
 cordance with the custom of the race, that Jugurtha had left the 
 field with his body-guard alone, that he had fled to wild and diffi- 
 cult country and was there raising a second army — an army that 
 promised to be larger than the first, but was likely to be less effici- 
 ent, composed as it was of shepherds and peasants with little training 
 in war.^ We cannot say whether Metellus accepted the strange 
 view that the vanished army, which had now probably returned to 
 the peaceful pursuits of agriculture and pasturage, would not be 
 reproduced in the new one ; but certainly the news of the future 
 weakness of Jugurtha's forces did not seem to him to justify an ad- 
 vance into Western Numidia, then as ever the stronghold of the 
 king and the seat of that treasure of human life which was of more 
 value than gold and silver. The Roman general, while recognising 
 that the belligerent aspect of the king made a renewal of the war 
 inevitable, was fully convinced that pitched battles were not the 
 means of wearing down Numidian constancy. The pursuit of Ju- 
 gurtha was impossible without conflicts, from which the vanquished 
 emerged less scathed than the victors,^ and even this primary ob- 
 ject of the expedition was for the time abandoned. He was forced 
 to adopt the circuitous device of attracting the presence of the 
 
 1 Sail. Jug. 54. I. 2 Ibid. 54. 3. 
 
 " Metellus, ubi videt . . . minore detrimento illos vinci quam suos vincere, 
 statuit non proeliis neque in acie, sad alio more bellum gerundum (Ibid. 54. $)■ 
 
108 B.C.] SECOND CAMPAIGN OF METELLUS 401 
 
 king, and weakening the loyalty of his subjects, by a series of mere 
 plundering raids on the wealthiest portions of the country. It was 
 a plan that in default of a really effective occupation of the whole 
 country, especially of some occupation of Western Numidia, implied 
 a certain amount of self-contradiction and inconsistency. The 
 plunder of the land was intended to secure the end which Me- 
 tellus wished to avoid — a conflict with the king ; and the mobility 
 which he so much dreaded could find no fairer field for its exercise 
 than the rapid marches across country which might secure a town 
 from attack, undo the work of conquest which had just been 
 effected in some other stronghold, or harass the route of the Roman 
 forces as they moved from point to point. Metellus was making 
 himself into an admirable target for the most effective type of 
 guerilla warfare ; but the whole history of the struggle down to its 
 close proves that this helplessness was due to the situation rather 
 than to the man. The Roman forces were wholly inadequate to an 
 effective occupation of Numidia ; and a general who despaired of 
 pushing on in an aimless and dangerous pursuit, had to be content 
 with the chances that might result from the capture of towns, the 
 plunder of territories, and secret negotiations which might bring 
 about the death or surrender of the king. 
 
 Neither the movements which followed the battle of the Muthul 
 nor the site of the winter quarters into which Metellus led his 
 men, have been recorded. The campaign of the next year seems 
 still to have been confined to the eastern portion of Numidia, 
 its object being the security of the country between Vaga and 
 Zama. This rich country was cruelly ravaged, every fortified post 
 that was taken was burnt, all Numidians of fighting age who offered 
 resistance were put to the sword. This policy of terrorism pro- 
 duced some immediate results. The army was well provisioned, the 
 frightened natives bringing in corn and other necessaries in abund- 
 ance ; towns and districts yielded hostages for their good behaviour ; 
 strong places were surrendered in which garrisons were left.^ But 
 the presence of Jugurtha soon made itself felt. The king, if he had 
 collected an army, had left the major part of it behind. He was 
 now at the head of a select body of light horse, and with this 
 mobile force he followed in Metellus's tracks. The Romains felt 
 themselves haunted by a phantom enemy who passed with incredible 
 
 • Sail. Jug. 54. 6. 
 26 
 
402 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 108 
 
 rapidity from point to point, whose stealthy advances were made 
 under cover of the darkness and over trackless wastes, and whose 
 proximity was only known by some sudden and terrible blow dealt 
 at the stragglers from the camp. The death or capture of those 
 who left the lines could neither be hindered nor avenged ; for be- 
 fore reinforcements could be hurried up, the Numidians had vanished 
 into the nearest range of hills. The most ordinary operations of 
 the army were now being seriously hindered. Supply and foraging 
 parties had to be protected by cohorts of infantry and the whole 
 force of cavalry ; plundering was impossible ; and fire was found 
 the readiest means of wasting country which could no longer be 
 ravaged for the benefit of the men. It was thought unsafe for the 
 whole army to operate in two independent columns. Such columns 
 were indeed formed, Metellus heading one and Marius the other ; 
 but it was necessary for them to keep the closest touch. Although 
 they sometimes divided to extend the sphere of their work of terror 
 and devastation, they often united through the pressure of fear, and 
 the two camps were never at a great distance from each other.^ 
 The king meanwhile followed them along the hills, destroying the 
 fodder and ruining the water supply on the line of march ; now he 
 would swoop on Metellus, now on Marius, harass the rear of the 
 column and vanish again into his hiding places. 
 
 The painful experiences of the later portion of this march con- 
 vinced Metellus that some decisive effort should be made, which 
 would crown his earlier successes, give him some sort of command 
 of the line of country through which he had so perilously passed, 
 and might, by the importance of the attempt, force Jugurtha to a 
 battle. The hilly country through which he had just conducted 
 his legions, was that which lay between the great towns of Sicca and 
 Zama.^ The possession of both these places was absolutely essen- 
 tial if the southern district which he had terrified and garrisoned 
 
 1 Sail. Jug. 55. 5. 
 
 " Sicca is the modern El Kef, but is still called by its inhabitants by its old 
 name of Sicca Veneria (Schak Ben4r). The name Veneria was derived from a 
 temple of the Punic Aphrodite (cf. Val. Max. ii. 6. 15). Of its strategic importance 
 Tissot says " El Kef is still regarded as the strongest place in Tunis. . . . The town 
 dominates the great plains of Es-sers, Zanfour, Lorbeus and of the Wad Mellag, 
 at the same time that it commands one of the principal ways of communication 
 leading from Tunis to Algiers." See Wilraanns in C. I. L. viii. p. 197; Tissot 
 Geogr. comp. ii. p. 378. Zama Regia is now identified, not with the place called 
 Lehs, El-Lehs or E116s (Wilmanns op cit. p. 210), but with DjiSma. See Tissot 
 of. cit. ii. pp. 571, 577-79; Mommsen in Hermes xx. pp. 144-56; Schmidt in 
 Rhein. Mus. 1889 (N. F. 44) pp. 397 foil. 
 
108 B.C.] SIEGE OF ZAMA 403 
 
 was to be kept permanently from the king. Sicca was already his, 
 for it had been the first of the towns to throw ofF its allegiance to 
 Jugurtha after the battle on the Muthul had dissipated the Nu- 
 midian army.^ He now turned his attention to the still more 
 important town of Zama, the true capital and stronghold of this 
 southern district, and prepared to master the position by assault 
 or siege. Jugurtha was soon cognisant of his plan, and by long 
 forced marches crossed Metellus's line and entered Zama.^ He urged 
 the citizens to a vigorous defence and promised that at the right 
 moment he would come to their aid with all his forces ; he strength- 
 ened their gan-ison by drafting into it a body of Roman deserters, 
 whose circumstances guaranteed their loyalty, and disappeared 
 again from the vision of friends and foes. Shortly afterwards he 
 learnt that Marius had left the line of march for Sicca, and that he 
 had with him but a few cohorts intended to convoy to the army the 
 corn which he hoped to acquire in the town. In a moment Ju- 
 gurtha was at the head of his chosen cavalry and moving under 
 cover of the night. He had hoped perhaps to find the division in 
 the town, to turn the tide of feeling in Sicca by his presence, and to 
 see the ablest of his opponents trapped within the walls. But, as 
 he reached the gate, the Romans were leaving it. He immediately 
 hurled his men upon them and shouted to the curious folk who 
 were watching the departure of the cohorts, to take the division in 
 the rear. Chance, he cried, had lent them the occasion of a glorious 
 deed of arms. Now was the time for them to recover freedom, for 
 him to regain his kingdom. The magic of the presence of the 
 national hero had nearly worked conversion to the Siccans and de- 
 struction to the Romans. The friendly city would have proved a 
 hornets' nest, had not Marius bent all his efforts to thrusting a 
 passage through Jugurtha's men and getting clear of the dangerous 
 walls. In the more open ground the fighting was sharp but short. 
 A few Numidians fell, the rest vanished from the field, and Marius 
 came in safety to Zama, where he found Metellus contemplating his 
 attack. 
 
 The city lay in a plain and nature had contributed but little 
 to its defence,' but it was strong in all the means that art could 
 supply and well prepared to stand a siege. Metellus planned a 
 general assault and arranged his forces around the whole line of 
 
 1 Sail. Jug. 56. 3. " lUd. 56. 2. 
 
 " Id oppidum in campo situm magis opere quam natura munitum erat ijbid. 57. i). 
 
404 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 108 
 
 wall. The attack began at every point at once ; in the rear were 
 the light-armed troops, shooting stones and metal balls at the de- 
 fenders and covering the efforts of the active assailants, who pressed 
 up to the walls and strove to effect an entry by scaling ladders and 
 by mines. The defending force betrayed no sign of terror or dis- 
 ordered haste. They calmly distributed their duties, and each 
 party kept a watchful eye on the enemy whom it was its function 
 to repel ; while some transfixed those farther from the wall with 
 javelins thrown by the hand or shot from an engine, others dealt 
 destruction on those immediately beneath them, rolling heavy 
 stones upon their heads and showering down pointed stakes, heavy 
 missiles and vessels full of blazing pine fed with pitch and sulphur .^ 
 The battle raging round the walls may have absorbed the 
 thoughts even of that section of the Roman army which had been 
 left to guard the camp. Certainly they and their sentries were 
 completely off their guard when Jugurtha with a large force 
 dashed at the entrenchments and, so complete was the surprise, 
 swept unhindered through the gate.^ The usual scene of panic 
 followed with its flight, its hasty arming, the groans of the wounded, 
 the silent falling of the slain. But the unusual degree of the 
 recklessness of the garrison was witnessed by the fact that not 
 more than forty men were making a collective stand against the 
 Numidian onset. The little band had seized a bit of high ground 
 and no effort of the enemy could dislodge them. The missiles 
 which had been aimed against them they hurled back with terrible 
 effect into the dense masses around ; and when the assailants 
 essayed a closer combat, they struck them down or drove them 
 back with the fury of their blows. Their resistance may have de- 
 tained Jugurtha in the camp longer than he had intended ; but 
 the immediate escape from the emergency was due to the cowards 
 rather than to the brave. Metellus was wrapt in contemplation of 
 the efforts of his men before the walls of Zama when he suddenly 
 heard the roar of battle repeated from another quarter. As he 
 wheeled his horse, he saw a crowd of fugitives hurrying over the 
 plain ; since they made for him, he judged that they were his own 
 
 ^ Contra ea oppidani in proxumos saxa volvere, sudes, pila, praeterea picem 
 sulphure et taeda mixtam ardentia mittere (Sail. Jug. 57. 5). If ardentia is correct, 
 the sudes and pila must also have been winged with fire. I have interpreted the 
 passage as though ardenti (suggested by Herzog) were the true reading. 
 Summers suggests "picem sulphure mixtam et tela ardentia". 
 
 'Ibid.5S.i. 
 
108 B.C.] SIEGE OF ZAMA 405 
 
 men. It seems that the cavalry had been drawn up near the walls, 
 probably as a result of the impression that Jugurtha, if he attacked 
 at all, would attempt to take the besiegers in the rear. Metellus 
 now hastily sent the whole of this force to the camp, and bade 
 Marius follow with all speed at the head of some cohorts of the 
 allies. His anguish at the sullied honour of his troops was greater 
 than his fear. With tears streaming down his face he besought 
 his legate to wipe out the stain which blurred the recent victory 
 and not to permit the enemy to escape unpunished. 
 
 Jugurtha had no intention of being caught in the Roman camp ; 
 but it was not so easy to get out as it had been to come in. Some 
 of his men were jammed in the exits, while others threw themselves 
 over the ramparts ; Marius took fuU advantage of the rout, and it 
 was with many losses that Jugurtha shook himself free of his pur- 
 suers and retreated to his own fastnesses. Soon the approach of 
 night brought the siege operations to an end. Metellus drew off 
 his men and led them back to camp after a day's experience that 
 did not leave a pleasant retrospect behind it. Warned by its in- 
 cidents that the cavalry should be posted nearer to the camp, he 
 began the work of the following day by disposing the whole of this 
 force over that quarter of the ground on which the king had made 
 his appearance ; ^ more definite arrangements were also made for 
 the detailed defence of the Roman lines, and the assault of the pre- 
 vious day was renewed on the walls of Zama. Yet in spite of these 
 elaborate precautions Jugurtha's coming was in the nature of a 
 surprise. The silence and swiftness of his onset threw the first 
 contingents of Romans whom he met into momentary panic and 
 confusion ; but reserves were soon moved up and restored the 
 fortune of the day. They might have turned it rapidly and 
 wholly, but for a tactical device which Jugurtha had adopted as a 
 means of neutralising the superior stability of the Romans — a 
 means which permitted him to show a persistence of frontal attack 
 unusual with the Numidians. He had mingled light infantry with 
 his cavalry ; the latter charged instead of merely skirmishing, and 
 before the breaches which they had made in the enemy's ranks 
 could be refilled, the foot soldiers made their attack on the dis- 
 ordered lines.^ 
 
 Jugurtha's object was being fulfilled as long as he could remain 
 
 1 SaU. yug. 59. 1. " Ibid. 59. 3. 
 
406 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 108 
 
 in the field to effect this type of diversion and draw off" considerable 
 forces from the walls of Zama. But his ingenious efforts attracted 
 the attention of the besieged as well as of the besiegers. It is true 
 that, when the assault was hottest, the citizens of Zama did not 
 permit their minds or eyes to stray ; but there were moments fol- 
 lowing the repulse of some great effort when the energy of the 
 assailants flagged and there was a lull in the storm of sound made 
 by human voices and the clatter of arms. Then the men on the 
 walls would look with strained attention on the cavalry battle 
 in the plain, would follow the fortunes of the king with every 
 alternation of joy or fear, and shout advice or exhortation as 
 though their voices could reach their distant friends.^ Marius, who 
 conducted the assault at that portion of the wall which commanded 
 this absorbing view, formed the idea of encouraging this distrac- 
 tion of attention by a feint and seizing the momentary advantage 
 which it afforded. A remissness and lack of confidence was soon 
 visible in the efforts of his men, and the undisturbed interest of 
 the Numidians was speedily directed to the manoeuvres of their 
 monarch in the plain. Suddenly the assault burst on them in its 
 fullest force ; before they could brace themselves to the surprise, 
 the foremost Romans were more than half-way up the scaling 
 laddere. But the height was too great and the time too short. 
 Stones and fire were again poured on the heads of the assailants. 
 It was some time before their confidence was shaken ; but when one 
 or two ladders had been shattered into fragments and their occu- 
 pants dashed down, the rest — most of them already covered with 
 wounds — glided to the ground and hastened from the walls. This 
 was the last effort. The night soon fell and brought with it, not 
 merely the close of the day's work, but the end of the siege of 
 Zama. 
 
 Metellus saw that neither of his objects could be fulfilled. The 
 town could not be taken nor would Jugurtha permit himself to be 
 brought to the test of a regular battle.' The fighting season was 
 now drawing to its close and he must think of winter quarters for 
 his aimy. He detei-mined, not only to abandon the siege, but to 
 quit Numidia and to winter in the Roman province. The sole relic 
 of the fact that he had mai'ched an army through the ten-itory 
 between Vaga and Zama were a few gai'risons left in such of the 
 
 1 Sail. yug. 6o. 4. > Ibid. 6i. i. 
 
108 B.C.] NEGOTIATIONS WITH BOMILCAR 407 
 
 surrendered cities as seemed capable of defence. The despatches 
 of this winter would not cheer the people or encourage the senate. 
 The policy of invasion had failed ; and, if success was to be won, 
 it could be accomplished by intrigue alone. Metellus, when the 
 leisure of winter quarters gave him time to think over the situa- 
 tion, decided that scattered negotiations with lesser Numidian mag- 
 nates would prove as delusive in the future as they had in the 
 past. The king's mind must be mastered if his body was to be 
 enslaved ; but it was a mind that could be conquered only by con- 
 fidence, and to secure this influence it was necessary to approach 
 the monarch's right-hand man. This man was Bomilcar, the most 
 trusted general and adviser of Jugurtha — trusted all the more 
 perhaps in consequence of the delusion, into which even a Numidian 
 king might fall, that the man who owes his life to another will owe 
 him his life-long service as well. A more reasonable ground for 
 Bomilcar's attachment might have been found in the consideration 
 that, in the eyes of Rome, he was as deeply compromised as 
 Jugurtha himself — from an official point of view, indeed, even more 
 deeply compromised ; for to the Roman law he was an escaped 
 criminal over whose head still hung a capital charge of murder.^ 
 But might not that very fact urge the minister to make his own 
 compeict with Rome .'' His life depended on the king's success, or 
 on the king's refusal to surrender him if peace were made with 
 Rome ; it depended therefore on a double element of doubt. 
 Make that life a certainty, and would any Numidian longer balance 
 the doubt against the certainty .'' Such was the thought of Metellus 
 when he opened correspondence with Bomilcar. The minister 
 wished to hear more, and Metellus arranged a secret interview. In 
 this he gave his word of honour that, if Bomilcar handed over 
 Jugurtha to him living or dead, the senate would grant him im- 
 punity and the continued possession of all that belonged to him. 
 The Numidian accepted the promise and the condition it involved ; 
 his mind was chiefly swayed by the fear that a continuance of the 
 even struggle might result in a compromise with Rome, and that 
 his own death at the hands of the executioner would be one of the 
 conditions of that compromise. 
 
 What passed between Bomilcar and Jugurtha can never have 
 been known. The king had no reason to regret the exploits of the 
 
 1 Sail. yug. 6i. 4. Cf. p. 365. 
 
408 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 108 
 
 year, and an appeal to the desperate nature of his position would 
 have been somewhat out of place. But some of the reflections of 
 Bomilcar, preserved or invented by tradition,' which pointed to 
 weakness and danger in the future, may conceivably have been ex- 
 pressed. It was true that the war was wasting the material strength 
 of the kingdom ; it might be true that it would wear out the con- 
 stancy of the Numidians themselves and induce them to put their 
 own interests before those of their king. Such arguments could 
 never have weighed with Jugurtha had not his recent success sug- 
 gested the hope of a compromise ; as a beaten fugitive he would 
 have had nothing to hope for ; as a man who still held his own he 
 might win much by a ready compact with a Roman general in 
 worse plight than himself. It seems certain that Jugurtha was for 
 the first time thoroughly deceived. His judgment, sound enough 
 in its estimate of the general situation, must have been led astray 
 by Bomilcar's representation of Metellus's attitude, although the 
 minister could not have hinted at a personal knowledge of the 
 Roman's views ; and his confidence in his adviser led to this rare 
 and signal instance of a total misconception of the character and 
 powers of his adversary. 
 
 Some preliminary correspondence probably passed between Ju- 
 gurtha and Metellus before the king sent his final message.^ It 
 was to the effect that all the demands would be complied with, and 
 that the kingdom and its monarch would be surrendered uncondi- 
 tionally to the representative of Rome. Metellus immediately 
 summoned a council, to which he gave as representative a character 
 as was possible under the circumstances. The transaction of deli- 
 cate business by a clique of friends had cast grave suspicions on 
 the compact concluded by Bestia ; and it was important that the 
 witnesses to the fact that the transaction with Jugurtha contained 
 no secret clause or understanding, should be as numerous and 
 weighty as possible. This result could be easily secured by the 
 general's power to summon all the men of mark available ; and thus 
 Metellus called to the board not only every member of the senatorial 
 order whom he could find, but a certain number of distinguished 
 individuals who did not belong to the governing class.' The policy 
 
 1 Sail. yug. 62. I. 
 
 ' Mittuntur ad imperatorem legati, qui Jugurtham imperata facturum dicerent 
 (Ibid. 62. 3). The word imperata implies previous negotiations. 
 
 'Metellus propere cunctos senatorii ordinis ex hibernis accersi jubet: eorura 
 et aliorum, quos idoneos ducebat, consilium habet (Ibid. 62. 4). 
 
108 B.C.] NEGOTIATIONS WITH JUGURTHA 409 
 
 of the board was to make tentative and gradually increasing de- 
 mands such as had once tried the patience of the Carthaginians.^ 
 Jugurtha should give a pledge of his good faith ; and, if it was 
 unredeemed, Rome would have the gain and he the loss. The 
 king was now ordered to surrender two hundred thousand pounds 
 of silver, all his elephants and a certain quantity of horses and 
 weapons.'^ He was also required to furnish three hundred hostages.' 
 The request, at least as regards the money and the materials for 
 war, was immediately complied with. Then the demands increased. 
 The deserters from the Roman army must be handed over. A 
 few of these had fled from Jugurtha at the very first sign that 
 a genuine submission was beiiig made, and had sought refuge 
 with Bocchus King of Mauretania ; * but the greater part, to the 
 number of three thousand,^ were surrendered to Metellus. Most 
 of these were auxiliaries, Thracians and Ligurians such as had 
 abandoned Aulus at Suthul ; and the sense of the danger threatened 
 by the treachery of allies, who must form a vital element in all 
 Roman armies, may have been the motive for the awful example 
 now given to the empire of Rome's punishment for breach of faith. 
 Some of these prisoners had their hands cut ofl'; others were buried 
 in the earth up to their waists, were then made a target for arrows 
 and darts, and were finally burnt with fire before the breath had 
 left their bodies.^ The final order concerned Jugurtha himself. 
 He was required to repair to a place named Tisidium,^ there to 
 wait for orders. The confidence of the king now began to waver. 
 He may have hoped to the last moment for some sign that his 
 cause was being viewed with a friendly eye ; but none had come. 
 Surrender to Rome was a thinkable position, while he was in a 
 position to bargain. It would be the counsel of a madman, if he 
 put himself wholly in the power of his enemy. He had sacrificed 
 much ; but the loss, except in money, was not irremediable. Ele- 
 phants were of no avail in guerilla warfare, and Numidia, which was 
 still his own, had horses and men in abundance. He waited some 
 days longer, probably more in expectancy of a move by Metellus 
 and in preparation of the step he himself meant to take, than in 
 doubt as to what that step should be ; when no modification of the 
 
 ' Ihne Rom. Gesch, v. p. 146. 
 
 ^ Sail. Jug. 62. 5. Orosius (v. 15. 7) adds that Jugurtha promised corn and 
 other supplies. 
 
 3 Oros. l.c. * Sail. Jug. 62. 7. " Oros. I.e. 
 
 ' App. Num. 3. ' Its site is unknown. 
 
410 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 108 
 
 demand came from the Roman side, he broke off negotiations and 
 continued the war. Metellus was still to be his opponent ; for earlier 
 in the year the proconsulate of the commander had been renewed.' 
 The events of the summer and the peace of winter-quarters had 
 given food for reflection to others besides Metellus. We shall soon 
 see what the merchant classes in Africa thought of the progress of 
 the war ; more formidable still were the emotions that had lately 
 been excited in the rugged breast of the great legate Marius. 
 There are probably few lieutenants who do not think that they could 
 do better than their commanders. Whether Marius held this view is 
 immaterial ; he soon came to believe that he did, and expressed this 
 belief with vigour. The really important fact was that a man who 
 had been praetor seven years before and probably regarded himself 
 as the greatest soldier of the age, was carrying out the behests 
 and correcting the blunders of a general who owed his command to 
 his aristocratic connections and blameless record in civil life. The 
 subordination in this particular form seemed likely to be perpetu- 
 ated in Numidia, for Metellus was entering on his second procon- 
 sulate and his third year of power ; in other forms and in every 
 sphere it was likely to be eternal, for it was an accepted axiom of 
 the existing regime that no " new man " could attain the consul- 
 ship.^ The craving for this office was the new blight that had 
 fallen on Marius's life ; for it is the ambition which is legitimate 
 that spreads the most morbid influence on heart and brain. But 
 the healthier part of his soul, which was to be found in that old- 
 fashioned piety so often maligned by the question-begging name 
 of superstition, soon came to the help of the worldly impulse 
 which the strong man might have doubted and crushed. On one 
 eventful day in Utica Marius was engaged in seeking the favour of 
 the gods by means of sacrificial victims. The seer who was inter- 
 preting the signs looked and exclaimed that great and wonderful 
 things were portended. Let the worshipper do whatsoever was in 
 his mind ; he had the support of the gods. Let him test fortune 
 never so often, his heart's desire would be fulfilled.^ 
 
 The gods had given a marvellous response in the only way in 
 
 ^ Romae senatus de provinciis consultus Numidiam Metello decreverat (Sail. 
 yug. 62. 10). It is possible that the senate merely abstained from making Numidia 
 a consular province. See Summers in loc. and cf. p. 222. 
 
 ^ Etiam turn alios magistratus plebs, consulatum nobilitas inter se per manus 
 tradebat. Novos nemo tam clarus neque tam egregiis factis erat, quin is indignus 
 illo honore et quasi poUutus haberetur (Ibid. 6?. 6). 
 
 'Ibid. 63. I. \ i ) 
 
108 B.C.] AMBITION OF MARIUS 411 
 
 which the gods could answer. They did not suggest, but they could 
 confirm, and never was confirmation more emphatic. Marius's last 
 doubts were removed, and he went straightway to his commander 
 and asked for leave of absence that he might canvass for the con- 
 sulship in that very year. Metellus was a good patron ; that is, 
 he was a bad friend. The aristocratic bristles rose on the skin that 
 had seemed so smooth. At first he expressed mild wonder at 
 Marius's resolution — the wonder that is more contemptuous than a 
 gibe — and exhorted him in words, the professedly friendly tone of 
 which must have been peculiarly irritating, not to let a distorted 
 ambition get the better of him ; every one should see that his desires 
 were appropriate and limit them when they passed this stage ; 
 Marius had reason to be satisfied with his position ; he should be 
 on his guard against asking the Roman people for a gift which they 
 would have a right to refuse. There was no suspicion of personal 
 jealousy in these utterances ; they reflected the standard of a caste, 
 not of a man. But Marius had measured the situation, and was 
 not to be deterred by its being presented again in a galling but not 
 novel form. A further request was met by the easy assumption that 
 the matter was not so pressing as to brook no delay ; as soon as 
 public business admitted of Marius's departure, Metellus would 
 grant his request. Still further entreaties are said to have wrung 
 from the impatient proconsul, whose good advice had been wasted 
 on a boor who did not know his place and could take no hints, the 
 retort that Marius need not hurry ; it would be time enough for 
 him to canvass for the consulship when Metellus's own son should 
 be his colleague.^ The boy was about twenty, Marius forty-nine. 
 The prospective consulship would come to the latter when he had 
 reached the mature age of seventy-two. The jest was a blessing, 
 for anything that justified the whole-hearted renunciation of pa- 
 tronage, the dissolution of the sense of obligation, was an avenue 
 to freedom. Marius was now at liberty to go his own vv^ay, and he 
 soon showed that there was enough inflammable material in the 
 African province to burn up the credit of a greater general than 
 Metellus. 
 
 It is said that the division of the army, commanded by Marius, 
 soon foimd itself enjoying a much easier time than before;^ the 
 
 1 Sail. Jug. 64. 4. 
 
 ^ Milites quibus in hibernis praeerat laxioie imperio quam antea habere (Ibid. 
 
 64. 5). 
 
412 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 108 
 
 stem legate had become placable, if not forgetful— a circumstance 
 which may be explained either by the view that a care greater than 
 that of military discipline sat upon his mind, or by a belief that 
 the new-born graciousness was meant to offer a pleasing contrast to 
 the rigour of Metellus. But in this case the civilian element in the 
 province was of more importance than the army. The merchant- 
 princes of Utica, ^oaning over the vanished capital which they had 
 invested in Numidian concerns, heard a criticism and a boast which 
 appealed strongly to their impatient minds. Marius had said, or 
 was believed to have said, that if but one half of the army were en- 
 trusted to him, he would have Jugurtha in chains in a few days ; ' 
 that the war was being purposely prolonged to satisfy the empty- 
 headed pride which the commander felt in his position. The 
 merchants had long been reflecting on the causes of the prolonga- 
 tion of the war with all the ignorance and impatience that greed 
 supplies ; now these causes seemed to be revealed in a simple and 
 convincing light. 
 
 The unfortunate house of Masinissa was also made to play its 
 part in the movement. It was represented in the Roman camp by 
 Gauda son of Mastanabal, a prince weak both in body and mind, 
 but the legitimate heir to the Numidian crown, if it was taken from 
 Jugurtha and Micipsa's last wishes were fulfilled. For the old king 
 in framing his testament had named Gauda as heir in remainder to 
 the kingdom, if his two sons and Jugurtha should die without 
 issue.^ The nearness of the succession, now that the reigning king 
 of Numidia was an enemy of the Roman people, had prompted the 
 prince to ask Metellus for the distinctions that he deemed suited to 
 his rank, a seat next that of the commander-in-chief, a guard of 
 Roman knights ' for his person. Both requests had been refused — 
 the place of honour because it belonged only to those whom the 
 Roman people had addressed as kings, the guard, because it was 
 derogatory to the knights of Rome to act as escort to a Numidian. 
 The prince may have taken the refusal, not merely as an insult 
 in itself, but as a hint that Metellus did not recognise him as a 
 
 1 Sail. Jug. 64. 5. 
 
 ^ Ihid. 65. I Erat praeterea in exercitu nostro Numida quidam nomine Gauda, 
 Mastanabalis filius, Masinissae nepos, quern Micipsa testamento secundum heredem 
 scripserat, morbis confectus et ob eam causam mente paulum inminuta. 
 
 ' Turmam equitum Romanorum (Ihid. 65. 2). It appears, therefore, thSit equites 
 equo publico, although seldom (if ever) used as cavalry at this time, still formed 
 the escort of generals or princes. 
 
108 B.C.] RENEWAL OF THE WAR 413 
 
 probable successor to Jugurtha. He was in an anxious and moody 
 frame of mind when he was approached by Marius and urged to 
 lean on him, if he would gain satisfaction for the commander's con- 
 tumely. The glowing words of his new friend made hope appeal 
 to his weak mind almost with the strength of certainty. He was 
 the grandson of Masinissa, the immediate occupant of the Nu- 
 midian throne, should Jugurtha be captured or slain ; the crown 
 might be his at no distant date, should Marius be made consul and 
 sent to the war. He should make appeal to his friends in Rome to 
 secure the means which would lead to the desired end. The ship that 
 bore the prince's letter to Rome took many other missives from far 
 more important men — all of them with a strange unanimity breath- 
 ing the same purport, " Metellus was mismanaging the war, Marius 
 should be made commander ". They were written by knights in 
 the province — some of them officers in the army, others heads of 
 commercial houses ^ — to their friends and agents in Rome. All of 
 these correspondents had not been directly solicited by Marius, but 
 in some mysterious way the hope of peace in Africa had become 
 indissolubly associated with his name. The central bureau of 
 the great mercantile system would soon be working in his favour. 
 Who would withstand it.'' Certainly not the senate still shaken 
 by the Mamilian law ; still less the people who wanted but a new 
 suggestion to change the character of their attack. All things 
 seemed working for Marius. 
 
 It was soon shown that, whoever the future commander of 
 Numidia was to be, he would have a real war on his hands ; for 
 the struggle had suddenly sprung into new and vigorous life, and 
 one of the few permanent successes of Rome was annihilated in a 
 moment by the craft of the reawakened Jugurtha. The preparations 
 of the king must have been conjectured from their results ; their 
 fost issue was a complete surprise ; for few could have dreamed 
 that the personal influence of the monarch, who had given away so 
 much for an elusive hope of safety and had almost been a prisoner 
 in the Roman lines, should assert itself in the very heart of the 
 country believed to be pacified and now held by Roman garrisons. 
 The town of Vaga, the intended basis of supplies for an army ad- 
 vancing to the south or west, the seat of an active commerce and 
 the home of merchants from many lands who traded under the 
 
 ' Equites Romanos, milites et negotiatotes (Sail, Jug. 65. 4). 
 
414 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 108 
 
 aegis of the Roman peace and a Roman garrison perched on the 
 citadel,^ was suddenly thrilled by a message from the king, and 
 answered to the appeal with a burst of heartfelt loyalty — a loyalty 
 perhaps quickened by the native hatred of the ways of the foreign 
 trader. The self-restraint of the patriotic plotters was as admir- 
 able as their devotion to a cause so nearly lost. Many hundreds 
 must have been cognisant of the scheme, yet not a word reached 
 the ears of those responsible for the security of the town. Even the 
 poorest conspirator did not dream of the fortune that might be 
 reaped from the sale of so vast a secret, and the Roman was as 
 ignorant of the hidden significance of native demeanour as he was 
 of the subtleties of the native tongue. In eye and gesture he could 
 read nothing but feelings of friendliness to himself, and he readily 
 accepted the invitation to the social gathering which was to place 
 him at the mercy of his host.^ The third day from the date at 
 which the plot was first conceived offered a golden opportunity for 
 an attack which should be unsuspected and resistless. It was the 
 day of a great national festival, on which leisured enjoyment took 
 the place of work and every one strove to banish for the time the 
 promptings of anxiety and fear. The officers of the garrison had 
 been invited by their acquaintances within the town to share in 
 their domestic celebrations. They and their commandant, Titus 
 Turpilius Silanus, were reclining at the feast in the houses of their 
 several hosts when the signal was given. The tribunes and cen- 
 turions were massacred to a man ; Turpilius alone was spared ; 
 then the conspirators turned on the rank and file of the Roman 
 troops. The position of these was pitiable. Scattered in the 
 streets, without weapons and without a leader, they saw the holi- 
 day throng around them suddenly transformed into a ferocious 
 mob. Even such of the meaner classes as had up to this time been 
 innocent of the murderous plot, were soon baying at their heels; 
 some of these were hounded on by the conspirators ; others saw 
 only that disturbance was on foot, and the welcome knowledge of 
 this fact alone served to spur them to a senseless frenzy of assault. 
 The Roman soldiers were merely victims ; there was never a chance 
 of a struggle which would make the sacrifice costly, or even diffi- 
 cult.^ The citadel, in which their shields and standards hung, was 
 in the occupation of the foe ; when they sought the city gates, they 
 
 ' P. 388. ' Sail. yug. 66. 3. 8 Ibid. 67. 
 
108 B.C.] RECOVERY OF VAGA 415 
 
 found the portals closed ; when they turned back upon the streets, 
 the line of fury was deeper than before, for the women and the 
 very children on the level housetops were hurling stones or any 
 missiles that came to hand on the hated foreigners below. Strength 
 and skill were of no avail ; such qualities could not even prolong 
 the agony ; the veteran and the tyro, the brave and the shrinking, 
 were struck or cut down with equal ease and swiftness. Only one 
 man succeeded in slipping through the gates. This was the com- 
 mandant Turpilius himself. Even the lenient view that a lucky 
 chance or the pity of his host had given him his freedom, did not 
 clear him of the stain which the tyrannical tradition of Roman arms 
 stamped on every commander who elected to survive the massacre 
 of the division entrusted to his charge.^ 
 
 When the news was brought to Metellus, the heart-sick general 
 buried himself in his tent.^ But his first grief was soon spent, and 
 his thoughts turned to a scheme of vengeance on the treacherous 
 town. Rapidly and carefully the scheme was unfolded in his mind, 
 and by the setting of the sun the first steps towards the recovery 
 of Vaga had been taken. In the dusk he left his camp with the 
 legion which had been stationed in his own quarters and as large a 
 force of Numidian cavalry as he could collect. Both horse and foot 
 were slenderly equipped, for he was bent on a surprise and a long 
 and hard night's march lay before him. He was still speeding on 
 three hours after the sun had risen on the following day. The 
 tired soldiers cried a halt, but Metellus spurred them on by point- 
 ing to the nearness of their goal (Vaga, he showed, was but a mile 
 distant, just beyond the line of hills which shut out their view), the 
 sanctity of the work of vengeance, the certainty of a rich reward 
 in plunder. He paused but to reform his men. The cavalry were 
 deployed in open order in the van ; the infantry followed in a 
 column so dense that nothing distinctive in their equipment or 
 organisation could be discerned from afar, and the standards were 
 carefully concealed.' When the men of Vaga saw the force bearing 
 down upon their town, their first and right impression led them to 
 
 ' Sail. jfug. 67. 3 Turpilius praefectus unus ex omnibus Italicis intactus profugit. 
 Id misericordiane hospitis an pactione an casu ita evenerit, parum comperimus : nisi, 
 quia illi-in tanto malo turpis vita Integra fama potior fuit, inprobus intestabilisque 
 videtur. 
 
 2 Ibid. 68. I. 
 
 ^ Ibid. 68. 4 Equites in primo late, pedites quam aitissume ire et signa occultare 
 jubet. 
 
416 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 108 
 
 close the gates ; but two facts soon served to convince them of their 
 error. The supposed enemy was not attempting to ravage their 
 land, and the horsemen who rode near the walls were clearly men of 
 Numidian blood. It was the king himself, they cried, and with 
 enthusiastic joy they poured from the gates to meet him. The 
 Romans watched them come ; then at a given signal the closed 
 ranks opened, as each division rushed to its appointed task. Some 
 charged and cut in pieces the helpless multitude that had poured 
 upon the plain ; others seized the gates, others again the now un- 
 defended towers on the walls. All sense of weariness had suddenly 
 vanished from limbs now stimulated by the lust of vengeance and 
 of plunder. The slaughter was pitiless, the search for plunder as 
 thorough as the slaughter. The war had not yet given such a 
 prize as this great trading town. Its ruin was the general's loss as 
 it was the soldiers' gain ; but the need for rapid vengeance van- 
 quished every other sentiment in Metellus's mind. Roman punish- 
 ment was as swift as it was sure, if but two days could elapse 
 between the sin and the suffering of the men of Vaga. A gloomy 
 task still remained. Inquiry must be made as to the mode in 
 which Turpilius the commandant had escaped unharmed from the 
 massacre. The investigation was a bitter trial to Metellus ; for the 
 accused was bound to him by close ties of hereditary friendship, and 
 had been accredited by him with the command of the corps of 
 engineers.^ The command at Vaga had been a further mark of 
 favour, and it was believed by some that Turpilius had justified 
 his commander's hopes only too well, and that it was his very 
 humanity and consideration for the townsfolk under his command 
 which had offered him means of escape such as only the most 
 resolute would have refused.^ But the scandal was too grave to 
 admit of a private inquiry, in which the honour of the army might 
 seem to be sacrificed to the caprice of the friendly judgment of 
 Metellus. His very familiarity with the accused entailed the duty 
 of a cold impartiality, and Turpilius found little credence or 
 excuse for the tale that he unfolded before the members of the 
 court which adjudicated on his case. The harsh view of Marius 
 was particularly recalled in the light of subsequent events. The 
 fact or fancy that it was Marius who had himself condemned 
 
 ' Plut. Mar. 8 oStoj y^p S liviip ftv fihv ix TiaTificav ^ivos t$ MereAX^i (col rirt tV 
 ' Plut. l.c. 
 
108, 107 B.C.] INTRIGUES OF BOMILCAR 417 
 
 and had urged his brother judges to deliver an adverse vote, was 
 seized by the gatherers of gossip, ever ready to discover a sinister 
 motive in the actions of the man who never forgot, was embedded 
 in that prose epic of the " Wrath of Marius " which subsequently 
 adorned the memoirs of the great, and became a story of how 
 the relentless lieutenant had, in malignant disregard of his own 
 convictions, caused Metellus to commit the inexpiable wrong of 
 dooming a guest-friend to an unworthy death.^ The death was 
 inflicted with all the barbarity of Roman military law ; Turpilius 
 was scoiu-ged and beheaded,^ and through this final expiation the 
 episode of Vaga remained to many minds a still darker horror than 
 before. 
 
 But much had been gained by the recovery of the revolted town. 
 It is true that in its present condition it was almost useless to its 
 possessors ; but its fate must have stayed the progress of revolt in 
 other cities, and the rapidity of Metellus's movements had ham- 
 pered Jugurtha's immediate plans. The king had probably intended 
 that Vaga should be a second Zama, and that the Romans should 
 be kept at bay by its strong walls while he himself harassed their 
 rear or attacked their camp. Now the scene of a successful guerilla 
 warfare must be sought elsewhere. Its choice depended on the 
 movements of the Roman army ; but the time for the commence- 
 ment of the new struggle was postponed longer than it might have 
 been by a domestic danger which, while it confirmed the king in 
 his resolution to struggle to the bitter end, absorbed his attention 
 for the moment and hampered his operations in the field. Bomil- 
 car's negotiations with Rome were bearing their deadly fruit.^ The 
 minister was a victim of that expectant anguish, which springs from 
 the failure of a treacherous scheme, when the cause of that failure 
 is unknown. Why had the king broken off" the negotiations ? 
 Was he himself suspected ? Would the danger be lessened, if he re- 
 mained quiescent .'' It might be increased, for the peril from Rome 
 still existed, and there was the new terror from the vengeance 
 of a master, whose suspicion seemed to his affrighted soul to be 
 
 1 Plut. l.c. 
 
 2 Sail. jfug. 6g. 4 Turpilius . . . condemnatus verberatusque capite poenas 
 solvit : nam is civis e Latio erat. If the last words mean that Turpilius was a 
 Latin, they may show that the law of Drusus (p. 242), if passed, was no longer 
 respected. If they mean that he was a Roman citizen from a Latin town, they illus- 
 trate this law. Appian {Num. 3) says that Turpilius was a Roman {&vSpa 'Pa/naTov). 
 
 3 Sail. yug. 70. 
 
 27 
 
418 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 107 
 
 revealing itself in a cold neglect. Bomilcar determined that he 
 would face but a single peril, and plunged into a course of intrigue 
 far more dangerous than any which he had yet essayed. He no 
 longer worked through underlings or appealed to the emissaries of 
 Rome. He aimed at internal revolution, at the fall of the king by 
 the hands of his servants — a stroke which he might exhibit to the 
 suzerain power as his own meritorious work — and he adopted as a 
 confidant a man of his own rank and at the moment of greater in- 
 fluence than himself. Nabdalsa was the new favourite of Jugurtha. 
 He was a man of high birth, of vast wealth, of great and good 
 repute in the district of Numidia which he ruled. His fame and 
 power had been increased by his appointment to the command of 
 such forces as the king could not lead in person, and he was now 
 opei'ating with an army in the territory between the head-quarters 
 of Jugurtha and the Roman winter camp, his mission being to pre- 
 vent the country being overrun with complete impunity by the 
 invaders. His reason for listening to the overtures of Bomilcar is 
 unknown ; perhaps he knew too much of the military situation to 
 believe in his master's ultimate success, and aimed at securing his 
 own territorial power by an appeal to the gratitude of Rome. But 
 he had not his associate's motive for hasty execution ; and when 
 Bomilcar warned him that the time had come, his mind was appalled 
 by the magnitude of a deed that had only been prefigured in an 
 ambiguous and uncertain shape. The time for meeting came and 
 passed. Bomilcar was in an agony of impatient fear. The doubt- 
 ful attitude of his associate opened new possibilities of danger ; a 
 new terror had been added to the old, and the motive for despatch 
 was -doubled. His alarm found vent in a brief but frantic letter 
 which mingled gloomy predictions of the consequences of delay with 
 fierce protestations and appeals. Jugurtha, he urged, was doomed, 
 the promises of Metellus might at any moment work the ruin of 
 them both, and Nabdalsa's choice lay between reward and torture.* 
 When this missive was delivered by a faithful hand, the general, 
 tired in mind and body, had stretched himself upon a couch. The 
 fiery words did not stimulate his ardour ; they plunged him still 
 deeper in a train of anxious thought, until utter weariness gave way 
 to sleep. The letter rested on his pillow. Suddenly the covering 
 of the tent door was noiselessly raised. His faithful secretary, who 
 
 ' Proinde reputaret cum animo suo, praemia an cruciatum mallet (Sail. yug. 
 70. 6). 
 
107 B.C.] THIRD CAMPAIGN OF METELLUS 419 
 
 believed that he knew all his master's secrets, had heard of the 
 arrival of a courier. His help and skill would be needed, and he 
 had anticipated Nabdalsa's demand for his presence. The letter 
 caught his eye ; he lightly picked it up and read it, as in duty 
 bound — for did he not deal with all letters, and could there be 
 aught of secrecy in a paper so carelessly laid down ? The plot now 
 flashed across his eyes for the first time, and he slipped from the 
 tent to hasten with the precious missive to the king. When Nab- 
 dalsa awoke, his thoughts turned to the letter which had harassed 
 his last waking moments. It was gone, and he soon found that his 
 secretary had disappeared as well. A fruitless attempt to pursue 
 the fugitive convinced him that his only hope lay in the clemency, 
 prudence or credulity of Jugurtha. Hastening to his master, he 
 assured him that the service which he had been on the eve of ren- 
 dering had been anticipated by the treachery of his dependent ; 
 let not the king forget their close friendship, his proved fidelity ; 
 these should exempt him from suspicion of participation in such a 
 horrid crime. 
 
 Jugurtha replied in a conciliatory tone.^ Neither then nor 
 afterwards did he betray any trace of violent emotion. Bomilcar 
 and many of his accomplices were put to death swiftly and secretly ; 
 but it was not well that rumours of a widely spread treason should 
 be noised abroad. The pretence of security was a means of ensur- 
 ing safety, and he had to ask too much of his Numidians to indulge 
 even the severity that he held to be his due. Yet it was believed 
 that the tenor of Jugurtha's life was altered from that moment. 
 ^It was whispered that the bold soldier and intrepid ruler searched 
 dark comers with his eyes and started at sudden sounds, that he 
 would exchange his sleeping chamber for some strange and often 
 humble resting place at night, and that sometimes in the darkness 
 he would start from sleep, seize his sword and cry aloud, as though 
 maddened by the terror of his dreams. 
 
 The news of the fall of Bomilcar swept from Metellus's mind 
 the last faint hope that the war might be brought to a speedy 
 close by the immediate surrender of Jugurtha,^ and he began to 
 make earnest preparations for a fresh campaign. In the new 
 struggle he was to be deprived of the services of his ablest ofiicer, 
 for Marius had at length gained his end and had won from his 
 
 1 Sail. yug. 72. « Ibid. 73. 
 
420 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 108 
 
 commander a tardy permit to speed to Rome and seek the prize, 
 which was doubtless still believed in the uninformed circles of the 
 camp to be utterly beyond his grasp. The consent, though tardy, 
 was finally given with a good will, for Metellus had begun to doubt 
 the wisdom of keeping by his side a lieutenant whose restless dis- 
 content and growing resentment to his superior were beyond all 
 concealment. Marius must have wished that his general's choler 
 had been stirred at an earlier date, for the leave had been deferred 
 to a season which would have deterred a less strenuous mind from 
 all thoughts of a political campaign during the current year. 
 Delay, however, might be fatal ; the war might be brought to a 
 dazzling close before the consular elections again came round ; the 
 political balance at Rome might alter ; it was necessary to reap at 
 once the harvest of mercantile greed and popular distrust that had 
 been so carefully prepared. It is possible that the usual date for 
 the elections had already been passed and that it was only the post- 
 ponement of the Comitia that gave Marius a chance of success.^ 
 Even then it was a slender one, for it was believed in later times 
 that his leave had been won only twelve days before the day fixed 
 for the declaration of the consuls.^ In two days and a night he 
 had covered the ground that lay between the camp and Utica. 
 Here he paused to sacrifice before taking ship to Italy. The 
 cheering words of the priest who read the omens * seemed to be 
 approved by the good fortune of his voyage. A favourable wind 
 bore him in four days across the sea, and he reached Rome to find 
 men craving for his presence as the crowning factor in a popular 
 movement, delightful in its novelty and entered into with a genuine 
 enthusiasm by the masses, who were fully conscious that there was 
 a wrong of some undefined kind to be set right, and were as a whole 
 perhaps blissfully ignorant of the intrigues by which they were being 
 moved. Yet the thinking portion of the community had some 
 grounds for resentment and alarm. The Numidian was not merely 
 injuring those interested in African finance, but was engaging an 
 army that was sadly needed elsewhere. The struggle in the North 
 was going badly for Rome, and despatches had lately brought the 
 
 ' Meinel (Zur Chronologic des yugurth. Krieges p. 13) thinks that the consular 
 elections of 108 did not take place before the winter, and that they may even have 
 drifted over into the following year, 
 
 ^ Plut. Mar. 8. 
 
 ' Plut. I.e. It is possible that this story and that of Sallust {Jug. 63 see p. 410) 
 about the sacrifice at Utica belong to the same incident. But it is not probable. 
 A man such as Marius would often approach a favourite shrine. 
 
108 B.C.] MARIUS AT ROME 421 
 
 news of the defeat of the consul Silanus by a vast and wandering 
 horde known as the Cimbri,^ who hovered like a threatening cloud 
 on the farther side of the Alps and might at no distant date sweep 
 past the barrier of Italy. The senatorial government, although its 
 position had not been formally assailed, had been sufficiently shaken 
 by the Mamilian commission to distrust its power of stemming an 
 adverse tide ; and Scaurus, its chief bulwark, had lately been so 
 ill-advised as to force a conflict with constitutional procedure in a 
 way which could not be approved by a class of men to which the 
 smallest precedent of political life that had once been stereotyped, 
 appealed as a vital element in administration. He had spoilt a 
 magnificent display of energy during his tenure of the censorship — 
 an energy that issued in the rebuilding of the Mulvian bridge ^ and 
 in the continuance of the great coast road ' from Etruria past Genua 
 to Dertona in the basin of the Po — by an unconstitutional attempt 
 to continue in his office after the death of his colleague. His 
 resignation had been enforced by some of the tribunes ; * and the 
 great man seems still to have been under the passing cloud 
 engendered by his own obstinate ambition, when the intrigues of 
 the ever-dreaded coalition of the mercantile classes and the popular 
 leaders were completed by the arrival of Marius. 
 
 This new figurehead of the democracy had a comparatively easy 
 part assigned him. Had it been necessary for him to persuade, he 
 would probably have failed, for he lacked the gifts of the orator 
 and the suppleness of the intriguer ; but he was expected only to 
 confirm, and better confirmation was to be gained from his martial 
 bearing and his rugged manner than from his halting words. The 
 speaking might be done by others more practised in the art ; a few 
 words of harsh verification from this living exemplar of the virtues 
 of the people were all that was demanded. His censure of Metellus 
 was followed by a promise that he would take Jugurtha alive or 
 dead.* The censure and the promise gave the text for a fiery 
 stream of opposition oratory. Threats of prosecuting Metellus on 
 a capital charge were mingled with passionate assertions of con- 
 fidence in the true soldier who could vindicate the honour of Rome. 
 The excitement spread even beyond the lazier rabble of the city. 
 Honest artisans, who were usually untouched by the delirious forms 
 
 1 Liv. Ep. Ixv. ^ [Victor] de Vir. III. 72 ; Ammian. xxvii. 3. g. 
 
 ' The via Aemilia ([Victor] l,c,; Strabo v. i. 11). 
 
 * Plut. Quaest. Rom. 50, » Plut. Mar. 8. 
 
422 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 108 or 107 
 
 of politics, and even thrifty country farmers,^ to whom time meant 
 money at this busy season of the year, were drawn into the throng 
 that gazed at Marius and listened to the burning words of his sup- 
 porters. Against such a concourse the nobility and its dependents 
 could make no head. The people who had come to listen stayed to 
 vote, and the suffrage of the centuries gave the " new man " as a 
 colleague to Lucius Cassius Longinus. But this triumph was but 
 the prelude to another. The people, now assembled in the plebeian 
 gathering of the tribes, were asked by the tribune Titus Manlius 
 Mancinus whom they willed to conduct the war against Jugurtha. The 
 answer " Marius " was given by overwhelming numbers, and the de- 
 cision already reached by the senate was brushed aside. That body 
 had, in the exercise of its legal authority, determined the provinces 
 which should be administered by the consuls of the coming year.^ 
 Nuraidia had not been one of these, for it had unquestionably been 
 destined for Metellus. Gaul, on the other hand, called for the pre- 
 sence of a consul and a soldier ; and the senate, although it had no 
 power to make a definite appointment to this province, had perhaps 
 intended that Marius, if elected, should be entrusted with its 
 defence. Had this resolution been adopted, the paths of Marius 
 and Metellus would have ceased to cross ; the Numidian war, which 
 demanded patience and diplomacy but not genius, might have 
 dwindled gradually away ; and the barbarians of the North might 
 have yielded to their future victor before they had established their 
 gloomy record of triumphs over the arms of Rome. But this was 
 not to be. The party triumph would be incomplete if the senate's 
 nominee was not ousted from his command. We cannot say 
 whether Marius shared in the blindness which saw a more glorious 
 field for military energy in Numidia than in Gaul ; personal rivalry 
 and political passion may have already blunted the instincts of the 
 soldier. But, whatever his thoughts may have been, his actions were 
 
 ' Sail. Jiig. 73. C Denique plebes sic accensa, uti opifices agrestesque omnes, 
 quorum res fidesque in manibus sitae erant, relictis operibus frequentarent Marium 
 et sua necessaria post illius honorem ducerent. The labours, from which the 
 agrestes were drawn, may have been those of early spring, if the elections were 
 delayed until the early part of 107 B.C. (See p. 420, Meinel I.e.) 
 
 ' Ibid. 73. 7 Sed paulo ante senatus Metello Numidiam decreverat : ea res 
 frustra fuit. The words in italics are not given by the good manuscripts ; they are 
 perhaps an interpolation drawn from ch. 62. See Summers in loc. It is possible 
 that some mention of the provinces which the senate had decreed to the new con- 
 suls stood here. Mommsen {Hist, of Rome bk. iv. c. 4) thinks that the passage 
 may have contained a statement that the senate had destined Gaul and Italy for 
 the consuls. 
 
107 B.C.] FIRST CONSULSHIP OF MARIUS 
 
 determined by a superior force. He was but a pawn in the hands 
 of tribunes and capitalists ; he had made promises which had raised 
 hopes, definitely commercial and vaguely political. These hopes it 
 must be his mission to fulfil. Before quitting Rome he found 
 words 1 which vented all the spleen of the classes screened out of 
 office by the close-drawn ring of the nobility. The platitudes of 
 merit, tested by honest service and approved by distinctions won in 
 war, were advanced against the claims of birth ; the luxurious life 
 of the nobility was gibbeted on the ground that sensuality was a 
 bar to energy and efficiency ; even the elegant and conscientious 
 taste of the cultured commander, who supplied the defects of ex- 
 perience by the perusal of Greek works on military tactics during 
 his journey to the scene of war, was held up to criticism as a sign 
 that the vain and ignorant amateur was usurping the tasks that 
 belonged to the tried and hardy expert.'' Fortunately the energy 
 of Marius was better expended on deeds than words. Whether 
 the African war really required a more vigorous army than that 
 serving under Metellus, might be an open question. Marius pre- 
 tended that the need was patent, and exhibited the greatest energy 
 in beating up veteran legionaries and attracting to his standard 
 such of the Latin allies as had already approved their skill in 
 service.^ The senate lent a ready hand. Nothing was more un- 
 popular than a drastic levy, and the favourite might fail when he 
 called for a fulfilment of the brave language that had been heard on 
 every side. But the confidence in the new commander baffled its 
 hopes ; the conscripts were marching to glory not to danger, and 
 the supplementary army, that was to avert a phantom peril and 
 save an imaginary situation, was soon enrolled. Such a demon- 
 stration had often been seen before in Rome ; the energy of an 
 ambitious commander had with lamentable frequency rebuked the 
 indolence or confidence of his predecessor, and Marius was but 
 following in the footsteps of Bestia and Albinus. The real merits 
 of his labours were due to his freedom from a strange superstition 
 which had hitherto clung to the minds even of the best commanders 
 that the later Republic had produced. They had continued to 
 hold the theory that the efiective soldier must be a man of means 
 
 1 Sail. Jug. 85. 
 
 ' Ibid. 85. 12 Atque ego scio, Quirites, qui, postquam consules facti sunt, et acta 
 majorum et Graecorum militaria praecepta legere coeperint — praeposteri homines : 
 nam gerere quam fieii tempore posteiius, re atque usu prius est. 
 
 » Ibid. 84. 2. 
 
424 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 107 
 
 — a belief inherited from the simple days of border warfare, when 
 each conscript supplied his panoply and the landless man could 
 serve only as a half-armed skirmisher. For ages past the principle 
 had been breaking down. The vast forces required for foreign 
 wars demanded a wider area for the conscription ; but this area, as 
 defined by the old conditions of service, so far from increasing, was 
 ever becoming less.^ In the age of Polybius the minimum qualifi- 
 cation requisite for service in the legions had sunk from eleven 
 thousand to four thousand asses ; ^ later it had been reduced to a 
 yet lower level ; ^ but, in spite of these concessions to necessity, 
 the senate had refused to accept the lesson, taught by the military 
 needs of the State and the social condition of Italy, that an empire 
 cannot be garrisoned by an army of conscripts. The legal power 
 to effect a radical alteration had long been in their hands ; for the 
 poorer proletariate of Rome whom the law described as the men 
 assessed " on their heads," not on their holdings, had probably been 
 liable to military service of any kind in time of need.* Perhaps it 
 was mere conservatism, perhaps it was a faint perception of the 
 truth that an armed rabble is fonder of men than institutions, and an 
 appreciation of the fact that the hold of the nobility over the capital 
 would be weakened if their clients were allowed to don the armour 
 which made them men, that had kept the senate within the strait 
 hmits of the antiquated rules. Fortunately, however, the methods of 
 raising an army depended almost entirely on the discretion of the 
 general engaged on the task. Did he employ the conscription in a 
 manner not justified by convention, he might be met by resistance 
 and appeals ; but, if he chose to invite to service, there was no power 
 which could prescribe the particular modes in which he should 
 employ the units that flocked to his standard. It was this latter 
 method that was adopted by Marius. He did not strain his 
 popularity, and invite a conflict with senatorial tribunes, by forcing 
 foreign service on the ragged freemen who had hailed him as the 
 saviour of the State ; but he invited their assistance in the glorious 
 
 1 P. 6i. ' Polyb. vi. 19. 2. 
 
 ' According to Gellius (xvi. 10. 10) 375 asses : — Qui . . . nuUo aut perquam 
 parvo acre censebantur, " capite censi " vocabantur, extremus autem census capita 
 censorum aeris fuit trecentis septuaginta quinque. But this decline from the 
 Polybian census seems incredibly rapid. Perhaps the figure should be 3,750 — one 
 closely resembling that given by Polybius. Cf. p. 61. 
 
 * Cf. Liv. X. 21 (cited by Ihne Rom. Gesch. v. p. 154) Senatus . . . delectum 
 omnis generis hominum haberi jussit. See also Gell. I.e. 13. Polybius vi. 19. 3, 
 according to Casaubon's reading (p. 135), cannot be cited in illustration of this point. 
 
107 B.C.] MILITARY PREPARATIONS OF MARIUS 425 
 
 work and asked them to be his comrades in the triumphal progress 
 that lay before him.^ The spirit of adventure, if not of patriotism, 
 was touched : the call was readily answered, and the stalwart limbs 
 that had lounged idly on the streets or striven vainly to secure the 
 subsistence of the favoured slave, became the instruments by which 
 the State was to be first protected and finally controlled. The con- 
 scription still remained as the resort of necessity ; but the creation 
 of the first mercenary army of Rome pointed to the mode in which 
 any future commander could avoid the friction and unpopularity 
 which often attended the enforcement of liability to service. The 
 innovation of Marius was sufficiently startling to attract comment 
 and invite conjecture. Some held that the army had been de- 
 mocratised to suit the consulship, and that the masses who had seen 
 in Marius's elevation the realisation of the vague and detached ambi- 
 tions of the poor, would continue to fm-nish a sure support to the 
 power which they had created.^ It is not unlikely that Marius, with 
 his knowledge of the tone of the army of Metellus, may have wished 
 to create for himself an environment that would mould the temper 
 of his future officers ; but those more friendly critics who held 
 that efficiency was his immediate aim, and that " the bad " were 
 chosen only because " the good " were scarce,^ suggested the reason 
 that was probably dominant as a motive and was certainly adequate 
 as a defence. No thought of the ultimate triumph of the individual 
 over the State by the help of a devoted soldiery could have crossed 
 the mind either of the consul or of his critics. The Republic was 
 as yet sacred, however unhealthy its chief organs might be deemed ; 
 and although Marius was to live to see the sinister fruit of his own 
 reform, the harvest was to be reaped by a rival, and the first fruits 
 enjoyed by the senate whom that rival served. 
 
 While the election of Marius, his appointment to Numidia, and 
 his preparations for the campaign were in progress, the war had 
 been passing through its usual phases of skirmishes and sieges. 
 
 ^ Sail. y«jf. 86 2 Ipse interea milites scribere, non more majorum neque ex 
 classibus, sed uti cujusque lubido erat, capite censos plerosque. Val. Max. ii. 3. i 
 Fastidiosum dilectus genus in exercitibus Romanis oblitterandum duxit. Cf. Florus 
 i. 36 (iii. i). 13. The tradition preserved by Plutarch (Mar. 9) that Marius enrolled 
 slaves as well (iroAic rhv &iTopov koX iovKov xaraypdiptnv), is apparently an echo from 
 the time of the civil wars. Plutarch may mean men of servile birth and, though it 
 is noted that fireedmen were not employed even on occasional service until go B.C. 
 (App. Bell. Civ. i. 49), yet it is possible that- Marius's hasty levy may have swept 
 in some men of this standing. But after, as before the time of Marius, free-birth 
 {ingenuitas) continued to be a necessary qualification for service in the legions. 
 
 2 Sail. Jug, 86. 3. 
 
A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 107 
 
 For a time no certain news could be had of the king ; he was re- 
 ported at one moment to he near the Roman lines, at another to be 
 buried in the solitude of the desert ; ^ the annoyance caused by his 
 baffling changes of plan was avenged by the interpretation that 
 they were symptoms of a disordered mind ; his oldfcounsellors were 
 said to have been dispersed, his new ones to be distrusted ; it was 
 beheved that he changed his route and his officers from day to day, 
 and that he retreated or retraced his steps as the terrors of suspicion 
 and despair alternated with the faintly surviving hope that a stand 
 might yet be made. Only once did he come into conflict with 
 Metellus.^ The site of the skirmish is unknown, and its result was 
 indecisive. The Numidian army is said to have been surprised and 
 to have formed hastily for battle. The division led by the king 
 offered a brief resistance ; the rest of the line yielded at once to the 
 Roman onset. A few standards and arms, a handful of prisoners, 
 were all that the victors had to show for their triumph. The 
 nimble enemy had disappeared beyond all hope of capture or 
 pursuit. 
 
 After a time news was brought that the king had made for the 
 southern desert with a fraction of his mounted troops and the 
 Roman deserters, whose despair ensured their loyalty. He had 
 shut himself up in Thala,^ a large and wealthy town to which his 
 treasures and his children had already been transferred. This 
 city lay some thirteen miles east of the oasis of Capsa, and 
 a dismal and waterless desert stretched between the Romans and 
 the refuge of the king. No Roman army had at any part of the 
 campaign attempted to penetrate such trackless regions, and the 
 court at Thala may have believed even this foretaste of the desert 
 
 1 Sail. yug. 74. I. ^ Ibid. 74. 2. 
 
 ' Ibid. 75. 1. There are two Thalas in Numidia. The one with which we are here 
 concerned is believed to be that lying east of Capsa (Khafsa), not that near Ammae- 
 dara (the latter is probably the Thala of Tac. Ann. iii. 21). Its identification was 
 due to Pelissier who visited the site. It has one of the characteristics mentioned 
 by Sallust, for the existing ruins are situated in a region destitute of water except for 
 one neighbouring fountain. The river from which the Romans drew water and 
 filled their vessels might be the one now called the Wad Lebem or Leben — the only 
 one in this part of Tunis which does not run dry even in summer. The ruins are 
 of small extent and unimposing, but this feature agrees with the statement of Strabo 
 xvii. 3. 12) that Thala was one of the towns blotted out by continuous wars in 
 Africa. It was, therefore, not restored by the Romans. It has been doubted 
 whether the name Thala is a proof of the identity of the site with that described 
 by Sallust, since Pelissier says {Rev. Arch. 1847, p. 399) that the place is sur- 
 rounded by a grove of trees, of the kind known as mimosa gummifera and called 
 thala by the Arabs. The ruins may have drawn their name from these trees. See 
 Wilmanns in C. I. L. viii. p. 28 and cf. Tissot Giogr. comp. ii. p. 633. 
 
107 B.C.] SIEGE OF THALA 427 
 
 to be an adequate protection against an enemy which clung to 
 towns and cultivated lands and relied, in the cumbrous manner 
 of civilised warfare, on organised lines of communication. But the 
 news that Jugurtha had at last occupied a position, the strength of 
 which, together with the presence of his family and treasures within 
 its walls, might supply a motive for a lengthy residence within the 
 town and even suggest the resolution of holding it against every 
 hazard, fired MetelluS with a hope which the awkward political 
 situation at Rome must have made more real than it deserved to be. 
 The end of the war might be in sight, if he could only cross that 
 belt of burning land. His plan was rapidly formed. The burden 
 of the baggage animals was reduced to ten days' supply of corn ; 
 skins of water were laid upon their backs ; the domestic cattle from 
 the fields were driven in, and they were laden with every kind of 
 vessel that could be gathered from the Numidian homesteads. The 
 villagers in the neighbourhood of the recent victory, whom the 
 flight of the king had made for the moment the humble servants of 
 Rome, were bidden to bring water to a certain spot, and the day 
 was named on which this mission was to be fulfilled. Metellus's own 
 vffisels were filled from the river,^ and the rapid march to Thala 
 was begun. The resting place was reached and the camp was en- 
 trenched ; water was there in greater abundance than had been 
 asked or hoped, for a sharp downpour of rain made the plethoric 
 skins presented by the punctual Numidians almost a superfluous 
 luxury and, as a happy omen, cheered the souls of the soldiers as 
 much as it refreshed their bodies.^ The devoted villagers had also 
 brought , an unexpectedly large supply of com, so eager were they 
 to give emphatic proof" of their newly acquired loyalty. But one 
 day more and the walls of Thala came in sight. Its citizens were 
 surprised but not dismayed ; they made preparations for the siege, 
 while their king vanished into the desert with his children and a 
 large portion of his hoarded wealth. It was too much to hope that 
 Jugurtha would be caught in such a trap. The alternative pro- 
 spects at Thala were immediate capture or a siege as protracted as 
 the nature of the territory would permit. In the latter case a 
 cordon would be drawn round the town and a price would probably 
 be put upon the rebel's head. It is strange that the desperate band 
 of deserters did not accompany the king in his flight. There may 
 
 1 See p. 426, note 3. ' Sail. Jug. 75. 9. 
 
428 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 107 
 
 have been no time for the retreat of so large a force, or the strength 
 and desolation of the site may have filled them with confidence of 
 success. But, if things came to the worst, they had a surprise in 
 store for their former comrades who were now battering against the 
 walls. 
 
 Metellus, in spite of the fact that he had lightened his baggage 
 animals of all the superfluities of the camp, must have brought 
 his siege train with him ; it would, indeed, have been madness to 
 attempt an assault on a fortified town without the necessary instru- 
 ments of attack. He seems in his lines round Thala to have had 
 all that he needed for a blockade ; even the planks for the great 
 moving turrets were ready to his hand.^ The engines were soon in 
 place on an artificial mound raised by the labour of the troops, the 
 soldiers advanced under cover of the mantlets, and the rams began 
 to batter against the walls. For forty days the courage of the 
 besieged tried the patience of assailants already wearied with the 
 toils of a long forced march. Had human endurance been the de- 
 ciding factor, Metellus might have been forced to retire. But the 
 wall of Thala was weaker than the spirit of its defenders ; a portion 
 of the rampart crumbled beneath the blows of the ram, and the 
 victorious Romans rushed in to seize the plunder of the treasure- 
 city. They found instead a holocaust of wealth and human victims. 
 The royal palace had been invaded by the deserters from the Roman 
 army whom Jugurtha had left behind. Thither they had borne the 
 gold, the silver and the precious stuff's which formed the glory of the 
 town. A feast was spread and continued until the banqueters were 
 heavy with meat and wine. The palace was then fired, and when 
 the plundering mob of Romans had made their way to the centre 
 of the city's wealth, they found but the smouldering traces of a 
 baffled vengeance and a disappointed greed. \ 
 
 The capture of Thala was one of those successes which might 
 have been important, had it been possible to limit the area of the 
 war or to check the disaffection which was now spreading through- 
 out almost the whole of Northern Africa. The fringe of the desert 
 had but been reached ; the king had fled beyond it ; the south and 
 west were soon to be in a blaze ; we shall soon see Metellus forced 
 to take up his position in the north ; and a slight incident which 
 occurred while Metellus was at Thala showed that even cities of the 
 
 ' Sail. Jug. 76. 3 Deinde locis ex copia maxume idoneis vineas agere, aggerem 
 jacere et super aggerem inpositis turribus opus et administros tutari. 
 
107 B.C.] NEW SCHEMES OF JUGURTHA 429 
 
 distant east, which had never been under the immediate sway of the 
 Numidian power, were wavering in their attachment to Rome. The 
 Greater Leptis, situate in the territory of the Three Cities between 
 the gulfs which sepai-ated Roman Africa from the territory of Cyrene, 
 had sought the friendship and alliance of Rome from the very com- 
 mencement of the war. A Sidonian settlement,^ it had, like most 
 commercial towns which sought a life of peace, preferred the pro- 
 tectorate of Rome to that of the neighbouring dynasties, and had 
 readily responded to the calls made on it by Bestia, Albinus and 
 Metellus.'' Such assistance as it furnished must have been sup- 
 plied by sea, for it was more than four hundred miles by land 
 from the usual sphere of Roman operations ; but the commissariat 
 of the Roman army was so serious a problem that the ships of the 
 men of Leptis must always have been a welcome sight at the port 
 of Utica. Now the stability of their constitution, and their service 
 to Rome, were threatened by the ambition of a powerful noble. 
 This Hamilcar was defying the authority both of laws and magis- 
 trates, and Leptis, they wrote, would be lost, if Metellus did not 
 send timely help. Four cohorts of Ligurians with a praefect at 
 their head were sent to the faithful state, and the Roman general 
 turned to meet the gi'aver dangers which were threatening in the 
 west. 
 
 Jugurtha had crossed the desert with a handful of his men and 
 was now amongst the Gaetulian tribes,^ who stretched from the 
 limits of his own dominions far across the southern frontier of his 
 brother king of Mauretania. His eyes were now turned to the 
 west ; the men of the desert, the King of the Moors, would be 
 infallible means of prolonging the war with Rome, if their help 
 could be secured. No Roman army had yet dared to penetrate even 
 into Western Numidia, and such a venture would be more hopeless 
 than ever, if the nomad tribes of the desert frontier and Bocchus of 
 Mauretania enclosed that district with myriads of mounted men 
 
 ' The name appears on coins in Punic letters as L B Q I (Movers Die Phoniser 
 II 2. p. 486 ; Miiller Numismatique de VAfrique II p. lo). Greek writers also call 
 it Neapolis, probably because it was not far from an older town at the mouth of the 
 Cinyps (the Wad Mghar-el-Ghrin), although others hold that this name designated 
 a particular quarter of the town. The three cities of the Syrtis — Sabrala, Oea and 
 Leptis — were called Tripolis, but do not seem to have been politically connected 
 with one another. Leptis had been stipendiary to Carthage (Liv. xxxiv. 62) and 
 had subsequently been occupied by Masinissa (Liv. I.e. ; rf. App. Lib. 106). But 
 the occupation was not permanent or eflfective. Sallust notes \yug. 78) that its 
 situation had enabled it to escape Numidian influence. 
 
 ' Sail. Jug. 77. 3. » Ibid. 80. i. 
 
430 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 107 
 
 that might sweep it at any time from point to point, and destroy in 
 a moment the laborious efforts at occupation that might be made 
 by Rome. The Gaetulians, although perhaps a nomad,i were not 
 a barbarian people. They plied with Mediterranean cities a trade 
 in purple dye, the material for which was gathered on the Atlantic 
 coast; and their merchants were sometimes seen in the market- 
 place at Cirta ; ^ but as fighting men they lacked even the organi- 
 sation to which the Numidians had attained, and Jugurtha, while he 
 sought or purchased their help, was obliged to teach them the rudi- 
 ments of disciplined warfare. Gradually they learnt to keep the 
 line, to follow the standards, to wait for the word of command be- 
 fore they threw themselves upon the foe ; ' these untrained warriors 
 must have been fired mainly by the love of adventure, of pay or 
 of plunder, or have been impressed by the greatness of the fugitive 
 who had suddenly appeared amongst their tribes ; they had no 
 hatred or previous fear of the power of Rome, for most of the 
 Gaetulian chiefs were ignorant even of the name of the imperial 
 city.* 
 
 This name, however, had long been in the mind of the king 
 who governed the northern neighbours of the Gaetulians, and it 
 was to the fears or hopes of Bocchus of Mauretania that Jugurtha 
 now appealed with the design of gaining an auxiliary force greater 
 than any which he himself could put into the field. He had a 
 claim on the Mauretanian king which might, have been valid in a 
 land in which polygamy did not prevail, for he was the husband of 
 that monarch's daughter ; but the dissipation of affection amongst 
 a multitude of wives and their respective progeny did not permit the 
 connection with a son-in-law to be a particularly binding tie.' There 
 were, however, other motives which might spur the king to action. 
 His early overtures to Rome had been rejected,^ and this neglect 
 must have aroused in his mind a feeling of anxiety as well as 
 of wounded pride. If Rome conquered Numidia, she might become 
 his neighbour. What in that case would be the position of Mau- 
 retania, connected as it would be by no previous ties of friendship 
 
 ^ P. 318. " Forbiger Handb. der alt. Geogr. ii. p. 885. 
 
 » Sail. y^ug. 80. -^. * Ibid. 80. I. 
 
 ' Ibid. 80. 6 Ea necessitudo apud Numidas Maurosque levis ducitur, quiasinguli 
 pro opibus quisque quam plurumas uxores, denas alii, alii pluris habent, sed reges 
 eo amplius. Ita animus multitudine distrahitur: nulla pro socia optinet, paiiter 
 omnes viles sunt. 
 
 • P. 349. 
 
107 B.C.] JUNCTION OF JUGURTHA AND BOCCHUS 431 
 
 or alliance with the conquering state ? If Bocchus joined Jugurtha, 
 he would immediately become a power with whom Rome would be 
 forced to deal. An ally detached from her enemies had often be- 
 come her most trusted friend ; it was thus that the power of Masi- 
 nissa had been secured and his kingdom had been increased. If 
 Jugurtha were victorious, the Romans would be kept at bay ; if he 
 showed signs of failure, the defection of Bocchus might be bought 
 at a great price. The game on which he had entered was absolutely 
 safe ; he could only be the loser if at the critical moment chivalry 
 or national sentiment interfered with the designs of a calculating 
 prudence. The great necessity of his position was to force the hand 
 of the Roman general and the Roman senate ; but meanwhile he 
 would keep an open mind and see whether the power which he 
 dreaded might not be permanently kept at bay. 
 
 It may have been with thoughts like these that Bocchus bowed 
 to the teaching of his counsellors when they urged a meeting with 
 Jugurtha.! The meeting was that of equals, not of a suppliant and 
 his protector. The Numidian king again headed an army of his 
 own, and, after the oath of alliance had been given and received, 
 exhorted his father-in-law in his own interest to join in a war that 
 was as necessary as it was just. The Romans, he pointed out, had 
 been made by their lust for conquest the common enemies of the 
 human race. One had only to look at their treatment of Perseus 
 of Macedon, of Carthage, of himself. Who was Bocchus that he 
 alone should be immune from such a danger ? The mood of the 
 king responded to Jugurtha's words, and without an instant's delay 
 they took the field together. Jugurtha was insistent on despatch, 
 for he knew the varying temper of his relative and feared that even 
 a slight delay would cool his resolve for decisive action. 
 
 The scene of the war now shifts with amazing suddenness to the 
 north and centres for the first time round the walls of Cirta.' 
 Metellus had evidently been drawn from the south by the news of 
 the threatened coalition ; for, if the territories near the coast were 
 undefended, the Mauretanians might sweep like a devastating storm 
 over the land that might have been held with some show of 
 justice to be in the possession of Rome. Cirta now appears as 
 within the pacified territory and, although we have no record as to 
 the time when it was lost by Jugurtha,' its possession by the 
 
 » Sail. Jug. 8i. I. ' Ibid. 82. i. » Cf. p. 349. 
 
A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 107 
 
 Romans need excite no surprise. It may have been lost at an early 
 period of the war, for there is no sign that it was employed by 
 Jugurtha either as a military or political capital, and if, in spite 
 of the massacre that had followed its capture from Adherbal, its 
 cosmopolitan mercantile life had been revived, the attachment of 
 the town to Rome would be assured on the news of the waning 
 fortunes of its king. Its surrender was certainly peaceful, and the 
 strength which might have defied the arms of Rome had rendered 
 it incapable of recovery by its former owner. To Cirta Metellus 
 had transferred his prisoners, his booty and his baggage,^ and it 
 was against Cirta that the two kings moved with their formidable 
 force. Jugurtha was the moving spirit in the enterprise, his idea 
 being that, even if the town could not be taken, the Romans would 
 be forced to come to its support and a battle would be fought be- 
 neath its walls. A battle was now an issue to be courted, for never 
 had he faced the enemy with greater numbers on his side. 
 
 Metellus was as fully conscious of the change in the situation. 
 Lately he had been forcing himself on Jugurtha at every point ; 
 now he held back and waited for the favourable chance. He 
 wished above all to learn something of the fighting spirit and 
 methods of the Moors ; ^ they were an untried foe, and Roman 
 success was usually the fruit of knowledge and not of experiment. 
 He waited in his fortified camp near Cirta to watch events, 
 when news was brought from Rome which proved to his mind that 
 cautious inaction was now not merely the wiser but the only policy. 
 The news that came by letter was of stunning force. Metellus had 
 already learnt of Marius's election to the consulship. This know- 
 ledge should have prepared him for the worst ; but a proud man, 
 conscious of his deserts, will not meet in anticipation an event that, 
 however probable, seems incredible. Yet here it was before him in 
 black and white. He had been superseded in his command and 
 the province of Numidia belonged to Marius.' There was no pre- 
 tence of self-restraint ; tears rose to his eyes, as bitter language 
 flowed from his lips. It was disputed whether natural pride or the 
 sense of unmerited wrong was the secret of his wrath, or whether 
 he held (as many thought) that a victory already won was being 
 wrested from his grasp. But it was safely conjectured that his 
 grief would not have been so violent had any man but Marius been 
 his successor. 
 
 > Sail. yug. 8i. 2. » Ibid. 82. x. » Ibid. 82. 2. 
 
107 B.C.] CLOSE OF METELLUS'S COMMAND 433 
 
 To risk a defeat at the moment when the command was slipping 
 from his grasp seemed to Metellus the height of folly ; but, even 
 had he not possessed this additional motive for inaction, the situa- 
 tion would probably have forced him to temporise and to attempt 
 to dissolve the hostile coalition by diplomacy. He therefore sent a 
 message to Bocchus urging him to think seriously of the course of 
 action which he had adopted.^ An opportunity was still open to 
 him of becoming the friend and ally of Rome ; why should he 
 adopt this motiveless attitude of hostility ? The cause of Jugurtha 
 was desperate ; did the King of Mauretania wish to bring his own 
 country into the same miserable plight .'' These were the first 
 words that Bocchus had heard of a possible convention with 
 Rome ; he had scored the first point, but was much too wise to 
 give away the game. Definite offers must be made and securely 
 guaranteed before he would withdraw the terror of his presence. 
 Firmness and conciliation must be blended in his answer, which, 
 when delivered, was both gracious and chivalrous. He longed, he 
 said, for peace, but was stirred to pity for the fortunes of Jugurtha. 
 If the latter were also given the chance of making terms with 
 Rome, all might be arranged. Metellus replied with another 
 message framed to meet the position taken up by the king ; the 
 answer of Bocchus was a cautious mixture of assent and protest. 
 As he showed no unwillingness to continue the discussion, Metellus 
 occupied the remainder of his own tenure of the command in further 
 parleyings. Envoys came and went, and the war was practically 
 suspended. A delicate and promising negotiation was on foot ; it 
 remained to be seen whether it would be patiently continued or 
 rudely interrupted by the new governor of Numidia. 
 
 1 Sail. Jug. 83. I. 
 
 28 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE summer must have been well advanced when Marius 
 landed at Utica with his untried forces. The veterans 
 were handed over to his care by the legate Rutilius,' for 
 Metellus had fled the sight of the man, whose success had been 
 based on a slanderous attack on his own reputation. It must have 
 been with a heavy heart that he accomplished the voyage to Rome; 
 for the greatest expert in the moods of the people could scarcely 
 have foretold the surprise that awaited him there. The popular 
 passion was spent ; it was a feverish force that had burnt itself 
 out ; the country voters had at last bethought themselves of their 
 work and returned to their farms ; many of the most active and 
 disorderly spirits, the restless loud-voiced men who are the potent 
 minority in an agitation, had been removed by the levy of Marius ; 
 with the city mob docility generally alternated with revolution, 
 and it was now inclined to look to the verdict of the recognised 
 heads of the State. In this moment of reaction, too, many must 
 have been inclined to wonder what after all could be said against 
 this general who had never lost a battle, who had conquered cities 
 and pitilessly revenged the one disaster which was not his fault, 
 who had constantly swept the terrible King of Numidia as a help- 
 less fugitive before him. The presence of Metellus completed the 
 work by giving stability to these half-formed views. The common 
 folk are the true idealists. They love a hero rather better than a 
 victim, although it often depends on the turn of a hair which part 
 the object of their attentions is to play. Now they followed the 
 lead of the- senate ; the returned commander was the man of the 
 day ; 2 he had exalted the glory of the Roman name ; and if there 
 was no fault, there could only have been misfortune ; but mis- 
 
 1 Sail. yufi-. 86. s. 'Ibid. 8S.1. 
 
 (434) 
 
107 B.C.] FIRST CAMPAIGN OF MARIUS 435 
 
 fortune might be compensated by honour. There was the prospect 
 of a triumph in store, that mixed source of sensuous satisfaction 
 and national self-congratulation. Thus Metellus won his prizes 
 from the Numidian war, a parade through the streets to the Cap- 
 itol and the addition of the surname " Numidicus " to the already 
 lengthy nomenclature of his house.^ 
 
 The war itself, under the guidance of Marius, soon assumed the 
 character which it had possessed under that of all his predecessors. 
 The originality of the new commander seemed to have spent itself 
 in the selection of his troops ; no new idea seems to have been in- 
 troduced into the conduct of operations, which resumed their old 
 shapes of precautions against surprise, weary marches from end to 
 end of Numidia, and the siege of strongholds which were no sooner 
 taken than they proved to be beyond the area of actual hostilities. 
 Perhaps no new idea was possible except one that exchanged the 
 weapons of war for those of diplomacy ; but even the final attempt 
 that had been made in this direction by Metellus was not continued 
 by Marius. Bocchus, unwilling to lose the chance which had been 
 presented of a definite convention with Rome, sent repeated mes- 
 sages to her new representative to the effect that he desired the 
 friendship of the Roman people, and that no acts of hostility on his 
 part need be feared ; ^ but his protestations were received with dis- 
 trust, and Marius, accustomed to the duplicity of the African mind 
 and rejecting the view that the king might really be wavering be- 
 tween war and peace, chose to regard them as the treacherous cover 
 for a sudden attack. The desultory campaign which followed seems 
 to have been directed by two motives. The first was the training 
 of the raw levies which had just been bi-ought from Rome ; the 
 second the supposed necessity of cutting Jugurtha off from the 
 strongholds which he still held at the extremities of his kingdom. 
 As these extremities were now threatened or commanded, on the 
 south by the Gaetulians and on the west by the Mauretanians, the 
 area of the war was no less than that of Numidia itself; and, as the 
 occupation of such an area was impossible, the destruction of these 
 strongholds, which was little loss to a mobile self-supporting force 
 such as that which Jugurtha had at his command, was the utmost 
 end which could be secured. 
 
 > Vellei. ii. ii Metelli . . . et tiiumphus fuit clariBsimus et meritum ex virtute 
 ei cognomen Numidici inditum. Cf. Eutrop. iv. 27. 
 « Sail. Jug. 88. 5. 
 
436 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 107 
 
 The practice of the untrained Roman levies was rendered easy 
 by the fact that Jugurtha had resumed the offensive. He no longer 
 had the help of his Mauretanian auxiliaries, for Bocchus had retired 
 to his own kingdom, and he had therefore lost his desire for a pitched 
 battle ; but his swarms of Gaetulian horse had enabled him to re- 
 sume his old style of guerilla fighting, and he had taken advantage 
 of the practical suspension of hostilities which had accompanied 
 the change in the Roman command, to set on foot a series of raids 
 against the friends of Rome and even to penetrate the borders 
 of the Roman province itself^ For some time the attention of 
 Marius was absorbed in following his difficult tracks, in striving 
 to anticipate his rapidly shifting plans, in creating in his own men 
 the habits of endurance, the mobility and the strained attention, 
 which even a brief period of such a chase will rapidly engender in 
 the rawest of recruits. The pursuit gradually shifted to the west, 
 and a series of sharp conflicts on the road ended finally in the rout 
 of the king in the neighbourhood of Cirta. With troops now 
 seasoned to the toils of long marches and deliberate attack, Marius 
 turned to the more definite, if not more effective, enterprise of be- 
 leaguering such fortified positions as were still strongly held, and by 
 their position seemed to give a strategic advantage to the enemy. 
 His object was either to strip Jugurtha of these last garrisons or to 
 force him to a battle if he came to their defence. At first he con- 
 fined his operations within a narrow area ; the best part of the 
 summer months seems to have been spent in the territory lying east 
 and south of Cirta, and within this region several fortresses and 
 castles still adhering to the king were reduced by persuasion or by 
 force.^ Yet Jugurtha made no move, and Marius gained a full ex- 
 perience of the helpless irritation of the commander who hears that 
 his enemy is far away, neglectful of his efforts and wholly absorbed 
 in some deep-laid scheme the very rudiments of which are beyond 
 the reach of conjecture. His operations seem to have brought him 
 to a point somewhere in the neighbourhood of Sicca, and this prox- 
 imity to the southern regions of Numidia suggested the thought 
 of an enterprise that might rival and even surpass Metellus's 
 storm of Thala. About thirteen miles west of that town' lay 
 
 1 Sail. Jug. 88. 3. 
 
 ' Sallust uses the historic infinitive IJhid. 8g. i Consul, uti statuerat, oppida 
 castellaque munita adire, partim vi, alia metu aut praemia ostentando avortere ab 
 hostibus), but the reduction of some of these places may perhaps be assumed. 
 
 « Cf. p. 426. 
 
107 B.C.] EXPEDITION TO CAPSA 437 
 
 the strong city of Capsa.' It marked almost the extremest limit 
 of Jugurtha's empire in this direction, placed as it was just north of 
 the great lakes and west of the deepest curve of the Lesser SjTtis. 
 The town was the gift of an oasis, which here broke the monotony 
 of the desert with pleasant groves of dates and olives and a peren- 
 nial stream of water. The sources of this stream, which was formed 
 by the union of two fountains, had been enclosed within the walls, 
 and supplied drinking water for the city before it passed beyond it 
 to irrigate the land. Even this supply hardly sufficed for the mod- 
 erate needs of the Numidians, who supplemented it by rain water ' 
 which they caught and stored in cisterns. A siege of Capsa in the 
 dry season might therefore prove irksome to the inhabitants ; but 
 the invading army might be even less well supplied, for although 
 four other springs outside the walls fed the canals which served the 
 work of irrigation, they tended to run low when the season of rain 
 was past. The security of the city, although its defences and its 
 garrison were strong, was thought to reside mainly in its desert 
 barrier. The waste through which an invading army would have 
 to pass was waterless and barren, while the multitude of snakes and 
 scorpions that found a congenial home on the arid soil increased the 
 horror, if not the danger, of the route.' Jugurtha had dealt kindly 
 by the lonely citizens of Capsa ; they were free from taxes and 
 had seldom to answer to any demand of the king : and this favour, 
 which was perhaps as much the product of necessity as of policy, 
 had strengthened their loyalty to the Numidian throne. It is prob- 
 able that some strategic, or at least military, motive was mingled in 
 
 • Capsa (Kafsa or Gafsa) may have been once subject to Carthage and have 
 been added to the kingdom of Masinissa after the Hannibalic war. Strabo (xvii. 
 3. 12) mentions it amongst the ruined towns of Africa, but it revived later on, re- 
 ceived a Latin form of constitution under Hadrian, and was ultimately the seat 
 of a bishopric. See Wilmanns in C. I. L. viii. p. 22. Its commercial importance 
 was very great. It was, as Tissot says (Geogr. comp. ii. p. 664), placed on the 
 threshold of the desert at the head of the three great valleys which lead, the one to 
 the bottom of the Gulf of Kabes, the other to Tebessa, the third to 'the centre of the 
 regency of Tunis. He describes it as one of the gates of the Sahara and one of the 
 keys of Tell, the necessary point of transit of the caravans of the Soudan and the 
 advanced post of the high plateau against the incursions of the nomads. Strabo 
 (l.c.) describes Capsa as a treasure-house of Jugurtha, but it has been questioned 
 whether this description is not due to a confusion with Thala (Wilmanns I.e.). 
 
 2 Sail. Jug. 89. 6. 
 
 " Ibid. 89. 5 Nam, praeter oppido propinqua, alia omnia vasta, inculta, egentia 
 aquae, infesta serpentibus, quarum vis sicuti omnium ferarum inopia cibi acrior. 
 Ad hoc natura serpentium, ipsa perniciosa, siti magis quam alia re accenditur. 
 Tissot says (op. cii. ii. p. 669) that the solitudes which surround the oasis make a 
 veritable " belt of sands and snakes " (cf, Florus iii. i. 14 Anguibus harenisque 
 vallatam). 
 
438 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 107 
 
 the mind of Marius with the mere desire of excelling his predecessor 
 and creating a deep impression in the minds of the proletariate in 
 his army and at home. Although Capsa, with its limited resources, 
 could hardly ever have served as the point of departure for a large 
 Numidian or Gaetulian host, it might have been of value as a refuge 
 for the king when he wished to vanish from the eyes of his enemies, 
 and perhaps as a means of communication with friendly cities or 
 peoples situated between the two Syrtes. To vanquish the difficul- 
 ties of such an enterprise might also strike terror into the Numidian 
 garrisons of other towns, and the subjects of Jugurtha might feel 
 that no stronghold was safe when the unapproachable Capsa had 
 been taken or destroyed. But the difficulties of the task were great. 
 The Numidians of these regions were more attached to a pastoral 
 life than to agriculture ; the stores of corn to be found along the 
 route were therefore scanty, and their scarcity was increased by the 
 fact that the king, who seems but lately to have passed through 
 these regions, had ordered that large supplies of grain should be 
 conveyed from the district and stored in the fortresses which his 
 garrisons still held.^ Nothing could be got from the fields, which 
 at this late period of the autumn showed nothing but arid stubble. 
 It was fortunate that some stores still lay at Lares (Lorbeus), a town 
 at a short distance to the south-east of his present base ; ^ these 
 were to be supplemented by the cattle that the foraging parties had 
 driven in, and the Roman soldier would at least have his unwelcome 
 supply of meat tempered by a moderate allowance of meal. Yet 
 the terrors of the journey were so great that Marius thought it wise 
 to conceal the object of his enterprise even from his own men, and 
 even when, after a six days' march to the south, he had reached a 
 stream called the Tana,^ the motive of the expedition was still in 
 all probability unknown. Here, as in Metellus's march on Thala, 
 a large supply of water was drawn from the river and stored in skins, 
 all heavy baggage was discarded, and the lightened column pre- 
 pared for its march across the desert. By day the soldiers kept 
 their camp and every stage of the journey was accomplished be- 
 
 1 Sail. yug. go. I. 
 
 ' Aulus Manlius was sent with some light cohorts to protect the stores at 
 Lares (Ibid. go. 2). These stores were, therefore, not exhausted. 
 
 ■'' The Tana has often been identified with the Wad Tina, but this identification 
 would take Marius along the coast by Thenae — a course which he almost certainly 
 did not follow. Tissot holds (Geogr. comp. i. p. 85) that Tana is only a generic 
 Libyan name for a water-course. He thinks that the river in question is the Wad- 
 ed-Derb. (Ibid. p. 86). 
 
107 B.C.] DESTRUCTION OF CAPSA 439 
 
 tween night-fall and dawn. On the morning of the third day they 
 had reached some rising ground not more than two miles from 
 Capsa.^ The sun had not yet risen when Marius halted his men in 
 a hollow of the dunes, and watched the town to see whether his 
 cautious plans had really effected a surprise. Evidently they had ; 
 for, when day broke, the gates were seen to open and large numbers 
 of Numidians could be observed leaving the city for the business of 
 the fields. The word was given, and in a moment the whole of the 
 cavalry and the lightest of the infantry were dashing on the town. 
 They were meant to block the gates ; while Marius and the heavier 
 troops followed as speedily as they could, driving the straggling 
 Numidians before them. It was the possession of these hostages 
 that decided the fate of the town. The commandant parleyed 
 and agreed to admit the Romans within the walls, the condition, 
 whether tacit or expressed, of this surrender being that the lives of 
 the citizens should be spared. The condition was immediately 
 broken. The town was given over to the flames, all the Numidians 
 of full age were put to the sword, the rest were sold into slavery, 
 and the movable property which had been seized was divided 
 amongst the soldiers. The breach of international custom was not 
 denied ; the only attempt at palliation was drawn from the reflec- 
 tion that it was due neither to motiveless treachery nor to greed ; 
 a position like Capsa, it was urged, — difficult of approach, open to 
 the enemy, the home of a race notorious for its mobile cunning — 
 could be held neither by leniency nor by fear.^ The expedition had 
 miscarried, if the town was not destroyed ; and, as frequently hap- 
 pens in the pursuit of wars with peoples to whom the convenient 
 epithet of "barbarian" can be applied, the successful fruit of 
 cruelty and treachery was perhaps defended on the ground that 
 the obligations of international law must be either reciprocal or 
 non-existent. 
 
 The destruction of Capsa was followed by other successes of a 
 similar though less arduous kind. The event had served the pur- 
 pose of Marius well in so far as it spread before him a name of 
 terror which caused some of the Numidian garrisons to flee their 
 strong places without a struggle. In the few cases^where resistance 
 was met, it was beaten down, and the fortified places which 
 
 1 This locus tumulosus (Sail. Jug. 91. 3) is identified by Tissot (op. cit. ii. p- 
 66g) with a spur of the Djebel Beni-Younes which dominates Kafsa on the north- 
 east at the distance indicated by Sallust. 
 
 ' Ihid. gi. 7. 
 
440 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 106 
 
 Jugurtha's soldiers were not rash enough to defend, were utterly 
 destroyed by fire.^ Marius left a wilderness behind him on his 
 return march to winter quarters,'^ and perhaps renewed his devas- 
 tating course in the south-eastern parts of Numidia during the spring 
 of the following year, before his attention was suddenly called to 
 another point in the vast area of the war. This easy triumph which 
 cost little Roman blood and enriched the soldiers with the spoils of 
 war, created in his men a belief in his foresight and prowess which 
 seemed sufficient to stand the severest strain.* A great effort had 
 now to be made in a quarter of Numidia which lay not less than 
 seven hundred miles from the recent scene of operations. As neither 
 the site of Marius''s recent winter quarters nor the base which 
 he chose for his spring campaign are known to us, we cannot say 
 whether the expedition which he now directed to the extreme west 
 of Numidia was an unpleasant diversion from a scheme already 
 in operation, or whether it was the result of a plan matured in the 
 winter camp ; but in either case this conviction of the necessity for 
 sweeping the country in such utterly diverse directions proves the 
 full success of the plan which Jugurtha was pursuing. It is more 
 difficult to determine whether Marius increased the success of 
 this plan by a political blunder of his own. The point at which he 
 is now found operating was near the river Muluccha or Molocath,* 
 the dividing line between the kingdoms of Numidia and Maure- 
 tania. If the incursion which he made into this region was un- 
 provoked, it was a challenge to King Bocchus and an impolitic 
 disturbance of the recent attitude of quiescence that had been 
 assumed by that hesitating monarch ; but it is possible that news 
 had reached Marius that a Mauretanian attack was impending, 
 and that the same motive which had impelled Metellus to hasten 
 from the south to the defence of Cirta, now urged his successor to 
 push his army more than five hundred miles farther to the west up 
 to the very borders of Mauretania. The movement seems to have 
 been defensive, for at the moment when we catch sight of his 
 
 1 Sail. Jug. 92. 3. 
 
 ^ Sallust omits all mention of these winter quarters. Such an omission does 
 not prove that he is a bad military historian, but simply that he never meant his 
 sketch to be a military history. But he has perhaps freed himself too completely 
 from the annalistic methods of most Roman historians. 
 
 ^ Sail. Jug. 92. 2. 
 
 * The Wad Muluja. It is called Muluccha by Sallust, MoXoxtifl by Strabo 
 (xvii. 3. g). Other names given to it by ancient authorities are Malvane, Ma\oi)a, 
 Malva. See Gobel Die Westkiiste A/rikas im Altertum pp. 79, 80. 
 
106 B.C.] SECOND CAMPAIGN OF MARIUS 441 
 
 efforts he had not attempted to cross the admitted frontier,* but 
 was endeavouring to secure a strong position that lay within what 
 he conceived to be the Numidian territory. A giant rock rose 
 sheer out of the plain, tapering into the narrow fortress which con- 
 tinued by its walls an ascent so smoothly precipitous that it seemed 
 as though the work of nature had been improved by the hand of 
 man.^ But one narrow path led to the summit and was believed to 
 be the only way, not merely to a position of supreme value for 
 defensive purposes, but also to one of those rich deposits which the 
 many -treasured king was held to have laid up in the strongest parts 
 of his dominions. The difficulties of a siege were almost insur- 
 mountable. The garrison was strong and well supplied with food 
 and water ; the only avenue for a direct assault upon the walls was 
 narrow and dangerous ; the site was as ill-suited as it could be for 
 the movement of the heavier engines of war. When the attack was 
 made, the mantlets of the besiegers were easily destroyed by fire 
 and stones hurled from above ; yet the soldiers could not leave 
 cover, nor get a firm hold on the steeply sloping ground ; the fore- 
 most amongst the storming party fell stricken with wounds, and a 
 panic seemed likely to prevail amidst the ever-victorious army if 
 it were again urged to the attack. While Marius was brooding 
 over this unexpected check, and his mind was divided between the 
 wisdom of a retreat and the chances that might be offered by 
 delay, an accident supplied the defects of strength and counsel.^ A 
 Ligurian in quest of snails was tempted to pursue his search from 
 ridge to ridge on that side of the hill which lay away from the 
 avenue of attack and had hitherto been deemed inaccessible. He 
 suddenly found that he had nearly reached the summit ; a spirit of 
 emulation urged him to complete the work which he had uncon- 
 sciously begun, and the branches of a giant holmoak, which twisted 
 amongst the rocks, gave him a hold and footing when the perpen- 
 dicular walls of the last ascent seemed to deny all chance of further 
 progress. When at length he craned over the edge of the highest 
 ridge, the interior of the fort lay spread before him. No member 
 of the garrison was to be seen, for every man was engaged in 
 repelling the assault which had been renewed on the opposite side. 
 A prolonged survey was therefore possible, and all the important 
 
 ^ Bocchus, however, claimed the territory within which Marius was operating 
 (Sail. Jug. 102). 
 
 ' Ibid. 92. 5. ' Ibid. 93. 
 
442 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 106 
 
 details of the fortress were imprinted on the mind of the Ligurian 
 before he began his leisurely descent. The features of the slope 
 he traversed were also more cautiously observed ; the next ascent 
 would be attempted by more than one, and every irregularity that 
 might give a foothold must be noted by the man who would have 
 to prove and illustrate his tale. When the story was told to Marius 
 he sent some of his retinue to view the spot ; their reports differed 
 according to the character of then* minds ; some of the investigators 
 were sanguine, others more than doubtful ; but the consul eventu- 
 ally determined to make the experiment. The escalade was to be 
 attempted by a band of ten ; five of the trumpeters and buglemen 
 were selected and four centurions, the Ligurian was to be their 
 guide. With head and feet bare, their only armour a sword and 
 light leathern shield slung across their backs, the soldiers painfully 
 imitated the daring movements of their active leader. But he was 
 considerate as well as daring. Sometimes he would weave a scaling 
 ladder of the trailing creepers ; at others he would lend a helping 
 hand ; at others again he would gather up their armour and send 
 them on before him, then step rapidly aside and pass with his 
 burden up and down their struggling line. His cheery boldness 
 kept them to their painful task until every man had reached the 
 level of the fort. It was as desolate as when first seen by the 
 Ligurian, for Marius had taken care that a frontal attack should 
 engage the attention of the garrison. The climb had been a long 
 one, and the battle had now been raging many hours when news 
 was brought to the anxious commander that his men had gained 
 the summit.^ The assault was now renewed with a force that 
 astonished the besieged, and soon with a recklessness that led them 
 to think the besiegers mad. They could see the Roman com- 
 mander himself leaving the cover of the mantlets and advancing in 
 the midst of his men up the perilous ascent under a tortoise fence 
 of uplifted shields. Over the heads of the advancing party came a 
 storm of missiles from the Roman lines below. Confident as the 
 Nuraidians were in the strength of their position, scornful as were 
 the gibes which a moment earlier they had been hurling against 
 the foe, they could not think lightly of the serried mass that was 
 moving up the hill and the rain of bullets that heralded its ad- 
 vance. Every hand was busy and every mind alert when suddenly 
 
 iSalLyag-. 94. 3. 
 
106 B.C.] MARIUS ON THE MULUCCHA 
 
 the Roman trumpet call was heard upon their rear. The women 
 and boys, who had crept out to watch the fight, were the first to 
 take the alarm and to rush back to the shelter of the fort ; most 
 of the men were fighting in advance of their outer walls ; those 
 nearest to the ramparts were the first to be seized with the panic ; 
 but soon the whole garrison was surging backwards, while through 
 and over it pressed the long and narrow wedge of Romans, cutting 
 their way through the now defenceless mass until they had seized 
 the outworks of the fort. 
 
 It is difiicult to gauge the positive advantages secured by this 
 feat of arms ; but it is probable that the capture of this particular 
 hill-fortress, although its difficulty gave it undue prominence in the 
 annals of the war, was not an isolated fact, but one of a series of 
 successful attempts to establish a chain of posts upon the Maure- 
 tanian border, which might bring King Bocchus to better counsels 
 and interrupt his communications with Jugurtha. The enterprise 
 may have been followed by a tolerably long campaign in these 
 regions. This campaign has not been recorded, but that it was 
 contemplated is proved by the fact that Marius had ordered an 
 enormous force of cavalry to meet him near the Muluccha.^ The 
 force thus summoned actually served the purpose of covering a 
 retirement that was practically a retreat ; but this could not have 
 been the object which it was intended to fulfil when its presence 
 was commanded. A large force of horse was essential, if Bocchus 
 was to be paralysed and the border country swept clear of the 
 enemy. The cloud that was to burst from Mauretania was not the 
 only chance that could be foretold ; it was the issue to be dreaded, 
 if all plans at prevention failed ; but it was one that might possibly 
 be averted by the presence of a commanding force in the border 
 regions. 
 
 It had taken nearly a year to collect and transport from Italy 
 the cavalry force that now entered the camp of Marius. The reason 
 why Italy and not Africa was chosen as the recruiting ground is 
 probably to be found in the lack of confidence which the Romans 
 felt even in those Numidians who professed a friendly attitude ; 
 otherwise cheapness and even efficiency might seem to have dictated 
 the choice of native contingents, although it is possible that, as a 
 defensive force, the tactical solidarity of the Italians gave them an 
 
 1 Sail. Jug. 95. I. 
 
444 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 106 
 
 advantage even over the Numidian horse. The Latins and Italian 
 allies had furnished the troopers that had lately landed on African 
 soilji perhaps not at the port of Utica, but at some harbour on the 
 west, for the time consumed by Marius in the march to his present 
 position, even had not his campaign been planned in winter quarters, 
 would have given him an opportunity to send notice of his where- 
 abouts to the leader of the auxiliary force. This leader was Lucius 
 Cornelius Sulla, who had spent nearly the whole of the first year of 
 his quaestorship in beating up on Italian soil the troops of horsemen 
 which he now led into the camp. In comparison with the arrival 
 of the force that of the quaestor was as nothing ; yet the advent of 
 such a subordinate was always a matter of interest to a general. 
 Tradition had determined that the ties between a commander and 
 his quaestor should be peculiarly close ; the superior was responsible 
 for every act of the minor official whom the chance of the lot might 
 thrust upon him ; if his subordinate were capable, he was the chosen 
 delegate for every delicate operation in finance, diplomacy, jurisdic- 
 tion, or even war ; if he were incapable, he might be dismissed,^ but 
 could not be neglected, for he was besides the general the only man 
 in the province holding the position of a magistrate, and was in 
 titular rank superior even to the oldest and most distinguished -of 
 the legates.' It was a matter of chance whether a government or 
 a campaign was to be helped or hindered by the arrival of a new 
 quaestor ; and Marius, when he first heard of the man whom des- 
 tiny had brought to his side, was inclined to be sceptical as to the 
 amount of assistance which was promised by the new appointment.* 
 Apart from a remarkable personal appearance — an impression due to 
 the keen blueness of the eyes, the clear pallor of the face, the sud- 
 den flush that spread at moments over the cheeks as though the 
 vigour of the mind could be seen pulsing beneath the delicate skin ' 
 — there was little to recommend Sulla to the mind of a hard and 
 stern man engaged in an arduous and disappointing task. The new 
 lieutenant had no military experience, he was the scion of a ruined 
 patrician family, and, if the gossip of Rome were true, his previous 
 life suggested the light-hearted adventurer rather than the student 
 
 ' Sail. yug. 95. I L. SuUa quaestor cum magno equitatu in castra venit, 
 quos uti ex Latio et a sociis cogeret Romae relictus erat. 
 
 ' Cic. in Verr. iii. 58. 134. ' Cf. Cic. ad Att. vi. 6. 3 and 4. 
 
 * Val. Max. vi. 9. 6 C. Marius consul moleste tulisse traditur quod sibi aspetri- 
 mum in Africa bellum gerenti tam delicatus quaestor sorte obvenisset. 
 
 » Plut. Sulla 2. 
 
106 B.C.] SULLA 445 
 
 of politics or war. In his early youth he seemed destined to continue 
 the later traditions of his family — those of an unaspiring temper or 
 a careless indolence, which had allowed the consulship to become 
 extinct in the annals of the race and had been long content with 
 the minor prize of the praetorship. Even this honour had been 
 beyond the reach of the father of Sulla ; the hereditary claim to 
 office had been completely broken, and the family fortune had sunk 
 so low that there seemed little chance of the renewal of this claim. 
 The present bearer of the name, the elder son of the house, had 
 lived in hired rooms, and such slender means as he could command 
 seemed to be employed in gratifying a passion for the stage.^ Yet 
 this taste was but one expression of a genuine thirst for culture ; ^ 
 and, whatever the opinion of men might be, this youth whose most 
 strenuous endeavours were strangely mingled with a careless genial- 
 ity and an appetite that never dulled for the pleasures of the senses 
 and the flesh, had a wonderful faculty for winning the love of women. 
 His father had made a second marriage with a lady of considerable 
 means ; and the affection of the step-mother, who seems to have 
 been herself childless, was soon centred on her husband's elder son.' 
 At her death he was found to be her heir, and the fortune thus ac- 
 quired was added to or increased by another that had also come by 
 way of legacy from a woman. This benefactress was Nicopolis, a 
 woman of Greek birth, whose transitory loves, which had brought 
 her wealth, were closed by a lasting passion for the man to whom 
 this wealth was given.^ The possession of this competence, which 
 might have completed the wreck of the nerveless pleasure-seeker 
 that Sulla seemed to be, proved the true steel of which the man was 
 made. The first steps in his political career gave the immediate 
 lie to any theory of wasted opportunities. He had but exceeded 
 by a year or two the minimum age for office when he was elected to 
 the quaestorship ; he was but thirty-one when he was scouring 
 Italy for recruits ; * a year later he had entered Marius's camp near 
 the Muluccha with his host of cavalry. A very brief experience was 
 sufficient to convert the general's prejudice into the heartiest ap- 
 
 1 Val. Max. I.e. ; Plut. Sulla 2. " 
 
 ' Litteris Graecis atque Latinis juxta, atque doctissume, eruditus (Sail. Jug. 
 
 95- 3)- 
 
 ' Plut. l.c. 
 
 * He was born in 138 B.C. He was entering on his sixtieth year at the time of 
 his death in 78 B.C. (Val. Max. ix. 3. 8). Cf. Vellei. ii. 17 and see Lau Lucius 
 Cornelius Sulla p. 25.' 
 
446 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 106 
 
 proval of his new officer. Any spirit of emulation which Sulla 
 possessed was but shown in action and counsel ; none could outstrip 
 him in prowess and forethought, yet all that he did seemed to be 
 the easy outcome either of opportunity or of a ready wit which 
 charmed without startling : and he was never heard to breathe a 
 word which reflected on the conduct of the pro-consul or his staff. 
 Over the petty officers and the soldiers he attained the immediate 
 triumph which attends supreme capacity combined with a facile 
 temper and a sense of humour. His old companions of the stage 
 had been perhaps his best instructors in the art of moulding the 
 will of the common man. He had the right address for every one ; 
 a grumble was met by a few kind words ; a roar of laughter was 
 awakened by a ready jest, and its recipient was the happier for the 
 day. When help was wanted, his resources seemed boundless ; yet 
 he never gave as though he expected a return, and the idea of obli- 
 gation was dismissed with a shrug and a smile.^ Sulla was not one 
 of the clumsy intriguers who laboriously lay up a store of favour 
 and are easily detected in the attempt. He was a terrible man be- 
 cause his insight and his charm were a part of his very nature, as 
 were also the dark current of ambition, scarcely acknowledged even 
 by its possessor, and the surging tides of passion, carefully dammed 
 by aft exquisitely balanced intellect into a Level stream, on which 
 crowds might float and believe themselves to be victims or agents 
 of an overmastering principle, not of a single man's caprice. 
 
 The capacity of every officer in Marius's army was soon to be 
 put to an effective test ; for the coalition of Jugurtha and Bocchus, 
 which the campaign might have been meant to prevent, turned out 
 to be its immediate result. The Moor was still hesitating between 
 peace and war — looking still, it may be, for another bid from the 
 representative of Rome, and waiting for the moment when he might 
 compel the attention of Metellus's rude successor, who preferred the 
 precautions of war to those of diplomacy — when the Numidian king, 
 in despair at this ruinous passivity and at the loss of the magnifi- 
 cent strategic chance that was being offered by the enemy, approached 
 his father-in-law with the proposal that the cession of one-third of 
 Numidia should be the price of his assistance. The cession was to 
 take effect, either if the Romans were driven out of Africa, or if a 
 settlement was reached with Rome which left the boundaries of 
 
 1 Sail. 3fug. 96. 
 
106 B.C.] JUNCTION OF JUGURTHA AND BOCCHUS 447 
 
 Numidia intact.^ Bocchus may not have credited the hkelihood of 
 the realisation of the first alternative ; but combined action might 
 render the second possible, and even if that failed, his chances of a 
 bargain with Rome were not decreased by entering on a policy of 
 hostility which might be closed at the opportune moment. For the 
 time, however, he played vigorously for Jugurtha's success. His 
 troops of horsemen poured over the border to join the Numidian 
 force, and the combined armies moved rapidly to the east to en- 
 compass the columns of Marius, that had just begun their long 
 march to the site which had been chosen for winter quarters. 
 
 The object of the Roman general was to keep in touch with the 
 sea for the purpose of facilitating the supply of his army. But we 
 cannot say whether his original choice was a station so distant as 
 the neighbom'hood of Cirta,^ or whether his movement in this direc- 
 tion, which severed him by some hundreds of miles from the region 
 which he had lately commanded, was a measure forced on him by 
 the danger to which his army was exposed in the distant west from 
 the overwhelming forces of the enemy. He had at any rate covered 
 a great stretch of territory before he actually came into touch with the 
 combined forces of Bocchus and Jugurtha ; for the almost continuous 
 fighting that ensued, when once the armies had come into contact, 
 seems all to have been confined to the last few days before Cirta 
 was reached and to a period of time which could have formed but a 
 small fraction of the whole duration of the march. The first attack 
 was planned for the closing hours of the day.' The advent of 
 night would be of advantage to the native force whether they were 
 victorious or defeated. In the first case their knowledge of the 
 ground would enable them to follow up their success, in the second 
 their retreat would be secured. Under all circumstances a struggle 
 in the darkness must increase the difficulties of the Romans. A 
 complete surprise was impossible, for Marius's scouting was good, 
 and from all directions horsemen dashed up to tell him the enemy 
 was at hand. But the quarter from which such an attack would be 
 aimed could not be determined, and so incredibly rapid were the 
 movements of the Moorish and Gaetulian horse that scarcely had 
 the last messenger ridden up when the Roman column was assailed 
 
 ' Sail. Jug. 97. 2. 
 
 ' Sallust states later that Cirta was his original aim {Ihid. 102. i Pervenit in 
 oppidum Cirtam, quo initio profectus intenderat); but Marius's plans may have 
 been modified by intervening events. 
 
 ^ Vix decuma parte die reliqua [Ibii, 97. 3). 
 
448 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 106 
 
 on every side. The Roman army had no time to form in line, and 
 anything approaching battle array was scorned by the enemy. They 
 charged in separate squadrons, the formation of which seemed to 
 be due to chance as much as to design ; this desultory mode of at- 
 tack enabled them to assail the Roman forces at every point and 
 to prevent any portion of the men from acquiring the stability that 
 might save the helplessness of the others ; they harried the legion- 
 aries as they shifted their heavy baggage, drew their swords and 
 hurried into line, and the cavalry soldiers as they strove to mount 
 their frightened horses. Horse and foot were inextricably mixed, 
 and no one could tell which was the van and which the rear of the 
 surrounded army. The general fought like a common soldier, but 
 he did not forget the duties of a commander. With his chosen 
 troop of horse he rode up and down the field, detecting the weak 
 points of his own men, the strong points of the enemy, lending a 
 timely succour to the first and throwing his weight against the 
 second." But it was the experience of the well-trained legionaries 
 that saved the day. Schooled in such surprises, they began to form 
 small solid squares, and against these barriers the impact of the 
 light horsemen beat in vain.' But night was drawing on — the hour 
 which the allied kings had chosen as the crowning moment of their 
 attack — and Marius was as fully conscious as his enemies how help- 
 less the Roman force would be if such a struggle were protracted 
 into the darkness. Fortunately the place of the attack had been 
 badly chosen ; the neighbouring ground did not present a wholly 
 level expanse on which cavalry could operate at will. But a short 
 distance from the scene of the fight two neighbouring hills could 
 be seen to rise above the plain ; the smaller possessed an abundant 
 spring of water, the larger by its rugged aspect seemed to promise 
 an admirable rampart for defence.^ It was impossible to withdraw 
 the whole army to the elevation which contained the welcome stream, 
 for its space did not permit of an encampment ; but Marius in- 
 structed Sulla to seize it with the cavalry. He then began to 
 draw his scattered infantry together, taking advantage of the dis- 
 order in the enemy which the last sturdy stand of the veterans had 
 produced, and when the divisions were at last in touch with one 
 
 1 Sail. Jug. 98. I. 
 
 ' Ibid. 97. 5 Denique Romani . . . orbis facere, atque ita ab omnibus partibua 
 simul tecti et instruct! hostium vim sustentabant. 
 8 Ibid. 98. 3. 
 
10(5 B.C.] RETIREMENT FROM WESTERN NUMIDIA 449 
 
 another, he led the whole force at a quick march to the place which 
 he had chosen for its retreat. The kings soon recognised that this 
 retreat was unassailable ; their plan of a night attack had failed ; 
 but they did not lose the hope that they held the Romans at their 
 mercy. The fight had become a blockade ; they would coop the 
 Romans within their narrow limits, or force them to straggle on 
 their way under a renewal of the same merciless assault. To have 
 withstood the legions and occupied their ground, was itself a triumph 
 for Gaetulians and Moors. They spread their long lines round 
 either hill and lighted a great ring of watchfires ; but their minds 
 were set on passing the night in a manner conducive neither to 
 sleep nor vigilance. They threw away their victory in a manner 
 common to barbarism, which often lacks neither courage nor skill, 
 but finds its nemesis in an utter lack of self-restraint. From the 
 silent dfirkness of the ridge above the Romans could see, in the 
 circles of red light thrown by the blazing watch-fires, the forms 
 of their enemies in every attitude of careless and reckless joy; while 
 the delirious howls of triumph which reached their ears, were a source, 
 not of terror, but of hope. In the Roman camp no sound was 
 heard ; even the call of the patrol was hushed by the general's com- 
 mand.^ As the night wore on, the silence spread to the plain 
 below, but here it was the silence of the deep and profound sleep 
 that comes on men wearied by the excesses of the night. Suddenly 
 there was a terrific uproar. Every horn and trumpet in the Roman 
 lines seemed to be alive, every throat to be swelling the clamour with 
 ear-piercing yells. The Moors and Gaetulians, springing from the 
 ground, found the enemy in their very midst. Where the slaughter 
 ended, the pm'suit began. No battle in the war had shown a larger 
 amount of slain ; for flight, which was the Numidian's salvation and 
 the mockery of his foe, had been less possible in this conflict than 
 in any which had gone before. 
 
 Marius continued his march, but with precautions even greater 
 than those which he had previously observed. He formed his 
 whole army into a "hollow square"^ — in fact, a great oblong, 
 arranged equally for defence on front, flanks, and rear, while the 
 baggage occupied the centre. Sulla with the cavalry rode on the 
 
 1 Sail. Jug. gg. i. ^ 
 
 ' Pariter atque in conspectu hostium quadrato agmine incedere (Ihid. loo. i). 
 For the nature and growth of this tactical formation amongst the Romans see 
 Marquardt Staatsverw. ii. p. 423. 
 
 29 
 
450 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 106 
 
 extreme right ; on the left was Aulus Manlius with the slingers and 
 archers and some cohorts of Ligurians ; the front and rear were 
 covered by light infantry selected from the legions under the com- 
 mand of military tribunes. Numidian refugees scoured the country 
 around, their knowledge of the land giving them a pecuHar value 
 as a scouting force. The camp was formed with the same scru- 
 pulous care ; whole cohorts formed from legionaries kept watch 
 against the gates, fortified posts were manned at short distances 
 along the enclosing mound, and squadrons of auxiliary cavalry 
 moved all night before the ramparts. Marius was to be seen at all 
 points and at all hours, a living example of vigilance not of dis- 
 trust, a master in the art of controUing men, not by terror but by 
 sharing in their toils. Four days had the march progressed and 
 Cirta was reported to be not far distant, when suddenly an ominous 
 but now familiar sight was seen. Scouts were riding in on every 
 hand ; all reported an enemy, but none could say with certainty 
 the quarter from which he might appear.^ The present disposition 
 of the Roman troops had made the direction of the attack a matter 
 of comparatively little moment, and Marius called a halt without 
 making any change in the order of his march. Soon the enemy 
 came down, and Jugurtha, when he saw the hollow square, knew that 
 his plan had been partly foiled. He had divided his own forces into 
 four divisions ; some of these were to engage the Roman van ; but 
 some at least might be able to throw themselves at the critical 
 moment on the undefended rear of the Roman column, when its 
 attention was fully engaged by a frontal attack.^ As things were, 
 the Roman army presented no one point that seemed more assail- 
 able than another, and Jugurtha determined to engage with the 
 Roman cavalry on the right, probably with the idea that by divert- 
 ing that portion of the Roman force which was under the circum- 
 stances its strongest protecting arm, he might give an opportunity 
 to his ally to lead that attack upon the rear which was to be the 
 crowning movement of the day. His assault, which was directed 
 near to the angle which the right flank made with the van, was 
 anticipated rather than received by Sulla, who rapidly formed his 
 force into two divisions, one for attack, the other for defence. 
 The first he massed in dense squadrons, and at the head of these he 
 
 ' Sail. Jug. loi. 2. 
 
 " It is possible that Jugurtha intentionally let his approach be known, so that 
 the Romans might form in their usual battle order. 
 
106 B.C.] CONFLICTS ON THE MARCH 451 
 
 charged the Moorish horse ; the second stood their ground, covering 
 themselves as best they could from the clouds of missiles that rose 
 from the enemy's ranks, and slaughtering the daring horsemen that 
 rode too near their lines. For a time it seemed as if the right flank 
 and the van were to bear the brunt of the battle ; the king was 
 known to be there in person : and Marius, knowing what Jugurtha's 
 presence meant, himself hastened to the front. 
 
 But suddenly the chief point of the attack was changed. 
 Bocchus had been joined by a force of native infantry, which his 
 son Volux had just brought upon the field. It was a force that 
 had not yet known defeat, for some delay upon the route had pre- 
 vented it from taking part in the former battle. With this infantry, 
 and probably with a considerable body of Moorish horse,^ Bocchus 
 threw himself upon the Roman rear. Neither the general nor his 
 chief officers were present with the division that was thus attacked ; 
 Marius and Sulla were both engrossed with the struggle at the 
 other end of the right wing, and Manlius seems still to have kept his 
 position on the left flank ; the absence of an inspiring mind 
 amongst the troops assailed, their ignorance of the fate of their 
 distant comrades, moved Jugurtha to lend the weight of his pre- 
 sence and his words to the efforts of his fellow king. With a 
 handful of horsemen he quitted the main force under his command 
 and galloped down the whole length of the right wing, until he 
 wheeled his horse amidst the front ranks of the struggling infantry. 
 He raised a sword streaming with blood and shouted in the Latin 
 tongue that Marius had already fallen by his hand, that the 
 Romans might now give up the struggle. The suggestion conveyed 
 by his words shook the nerves even of those who did not credit 
 the horrifying news,^ while the presence of the king, here as every- 
 where, stirred the Africans to their highest pitch of daring. They 
 pressed the wavering Romans harder than before, the battle at this 
 point had almost become a rout, when suddenly a large body of 
 Roman horse was seen to be bearing down on the right flank of the 
 Moorish infantry. They were led by Sulla, whose vigorous attacks 
 had scattered the enemy on the right wing ; he could now employ 
 his cavalry for other purposes, and the Moorish infantry shook 
 
 ' This force is not mentioned by Sallust (Sail. yug. loi. 5), but it seems im- 
 plied in the junction of Bocchus with Volux. 
 
 ^ Quod ubi milites accepere, raagis atrocitate rei quam fide nuntii terrentur 
 (Ibid. loi. 7). 
 
452 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 106 
 
 beneath the flank attack. Jugurtha refused to see that the tide of 
 victory had turned ; with a reckless courage he still strove to weld 
 together the shattered forces of the Moors and to urge them against 
 the Roman lines ; his own escape was a miracle ; men fell to left 
 and right of him, he was pressed on both sides by the Roman horse ; 
 at times he seemed almost alone amidst his foes ; yet at the last 
 moment he vanished, and the capture which would have ended the 
 war was still beyond the reach of Roman skill and prowess.^ Sulla 
 had saved the day, the advent of Marius was but needed to put the 
 final touches to the victory. He had seen the cavalry on the right 
 scatter beneath the charges of the Roman horse, and almost at the 
 same moment news was brought him that his men were being 
 driven back upon the rear. His succour was scarcely needed, but 
 his presence gave an impulse to pursuit. The sight of the field 
 when that pursuit was at its height, lived ever in the minds of those 
 who shared in its glory and its horror. The sickening spectacle 
 which a hard fought battle yields, was protracted in this instance 
 by the vast vista of the plains. Wherever the eye could reach 
 there were prostrate bodies of men and horses, whose only claim to 
 life was the writhing agony of their wounds ; on a stage dyed red 
 with blood and strewn with the furniture of shattered weapons 
 little moving groups could be seen. The figures of these puppets 
 showed all the phases of helpless flight, violent pursuit, and pitiless 
 slaughter. 
 
 In spite of the carnage of this battlefield, victory here, as else- 
 where throughout the war, meant little more than driving off the 
 foe. We possess but a fragmentary record of this terrible retreat 
 to Cirta, but it is certain that its dangers and losses were by no 
 means exhausted in two pitched battles. A chance notice torn from 
 its context^ tells of a third great contest which closed a long period 
 of harassing attacks. Close to the walls of Cirta the Roman army 
 was met by the two kings at the head of sixty thousand horse. 
 The combatants were swathed in a cloud raised by the dust of 
 battle, the Roman soldiers massed in a narrow space were such 
 
 ' Sail. Jug. loi. 9. 
 
 ' Oros. V. 15. 9 foil. This account in Orosius corresponds to nothing in 
 Sallust and is clearly drawn from other sources. The attempt of the Romans to 
 storm Cirta (§ lo) must be a mistake, unless it refers to some earlier and unrecorded 
 operation of the war. Some details of § 14 bear a shadowy resemblance to points 
 in the first of the recent battles described by Sallust ; but tiere are other details 
 which make the identification impossible. 
 
106 B.C.] CONFLICTS ON THE MARCH 453 
 
 helpless victims of the missiles of the enemy that the Numidian 
 and Moorish horsemen ceased to single out their targets, and threw 
 their javelins at random into the crowded ranks with the certainty 
 that each would find its mark. For three days was the running 
 fight continued. A charge was impossible against the volleys of 
 the foe, and retreat was cut off by the multitude of light horse- 
 men that hemmed the army in on every side. In the last desperate 
 effort which Marius made to free himself from the meshes of the 
 kings, even the centre of his column shook under the hail of 
 missiles that assailed it, and to the weapons of the enemy were soon 
 added the terrors of blinding heat and intolerable thirst. Sud- 
 denly a storm broke over the warring hosts. It cooled the throats 
 of the Romans and refreshed their limbs, while it lessened the 
 power of their foes. The strapless javelins^ of the Numidians 
 could not be hurled when wet, for they slipped from the hands of 
 the thrower ; their shields of elephants' hide absorbed water like a 
 sponge and weighed down the arms on which they hung. The 
 Moors and Numidians, seeing that even their means of defence had 
 failed them, took to flight : but only to appear on another day with 
 their army raised to ninety thousand and to repeat the attempt to 
 surround the Roman host. This last effort ended in a signal victory 
 for Marius. The forces of the two kings were not only defeated but 
 almost destroyed. 
 
 The events thus recorded can scarcely be regarded as mere 
 variants of the two battles which we have previously described. 
 Vague and rhetorical as is the account which sets them forth, it 
 shows that there were traditions of suffering and loss endured by 
 the army of Marius such as found no parallel in the campaign of 
 his predecessor. Marius had attempted what Metellus had never 
 dared — a campaign in the far west of Numidia. Its results were 
 fruitless successes of the pfdadin type followed by a burdensome 
 and disastrous retreat. The west was lost, the east was threatened, - 
 yet the lesson was not without its fruit. The general when he 
 reached the walls of Cirta had lost something of his hardy faith in 
 the use of blood and iron ; he was more ready to appeal to the 
 motives which make for peace, to pretend a trust he did not feel, 
 to make promises which might induce the fluid treachery of Bocchus 
 to harden into a definite act of treason to his brother king, above 
 
 ' Hastilia teloium, quae manu intorqueie sine ammentis solent (Oros. v. 13. i6). 
 
454 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 106 
 
 all, to lean on some other man who could play the delicate game 
 of diplomatic fence with a cunning which his own straightforward 
 methods could not attain. Everything depended on the attitude 
 of the King of Mauretania; and here again the campaign had 
 not been without some healthful consequences. If the Romans had 
 gained no material advantage, Bocchus had suffered some very 
 material losses. His forces had been cut up, the stigma of failure 
 attached (perhaps for the first time) to their leader, the first contact 
 with the Romans had not been encouraging to his subjects. And 
 the campaign may also have revealed the difficulty, if not the hope- 
 lessness, of Jugurtha's cause. The plan of driving the Romans 
 from Africa could not be perfected even with the combined forces 
 of the two kingdoms at their fullest strength ; however much they 
 might harass, they had proved themselves utterly unable to attain 
 such a success as even the most complacent patriotism could name 
 a victory ; while the sturdiness of the resistance of Rome seemed 
 to banish the hypothesis that Jugurtha would be included in any 
 terms that might be made. Yet the campaign had left Bocchus 
 in an excellent position for negotiation. He had shown that 
 Mauretania was a great make-weight in the scale against Rome ; 
 he had advertised his power as an enemy, his value as an ally ; now 
 was the time to see whether the power and the value, so long 
 ignored, would be appreciated by Rome. 
 
 But five days are said to have elapsed since the last great con- 
 flict with the Moors when envoys from Bocchus waited on Marius 
 in his winter quarters at Cirta.^ The request which they brought 
 was that " two of the Roman general's most trusty friends should 
 wait on the king, who desired to speak with them on a matter of 
 interest to himself and the Roman people".^ Marius forthwith 
 singled out Sulla and Manlius, who followed the envoys to the 
 place of meeting that had been an-anged. On the way it was 
 agreed by the representatives of Rome that they should not wait 
 for the king to open the discussion. Hitherto every proposal had 
 come from Bocchus ; he had been played with, but never given a 
 straightforward answer, still less a sign of real encouragement. 
 Yet no good could be gained by expecting the king to assume a 
 grovelling attitude, by forcing him to begin proposals for peace 
 
 ' According to Sallust (^ug. 102. 2) ; but the fight which he describes may not 
 have been the final battle. See p. 452. 
 * Ibid. 102. 3. 
 
106 B.C.] NEGOTIATIONS WITH BOCCHUS 456 
 
 with a confession of his own humiliation. It would be far wiser if the 
 commissioners opened with a few spontaneous remarks which might 
 restore rest and dignity to the royal mind. Manlius the elder 
 readily yielded the place of first speaker to the more facile Sulla. 
 If the words which history has attributed to the quaestor^ were 
 really used by him, they are a record of one of those rare instances 
 in which a diplomatist is able to tell the naked truth. Sulla began 
 by dwelling on the joy which he and his friends derived from the 
 change in Bocchus's mind — from the heaven-sent inspiration which 
 had taught the king that peace was preferable to war. He then 
 dwelt on the fact, which he might have adduced the whole of 
 his country's history to prove, that Rome had been ever keener 
 in the search for friends than subjects, that the Republic had ever 
 deemed voluntary allegiance safer than that compelled by force. 
 He showed that Roman friendship might be a boon, not a burden, 
 to Bocchus ; the distance of his kingdom from the capital would 
 obviate a conflict of interests, but no distance was too great to be 
 traversed by the gratitude of Rome. Bocchus had already seen 
 what Rome could do in war ; all that he needed to learn was the 
 still greater lesson that her generosity was as unconquerable as 
 her arms. Sulla's words were a genuine statement of the whole 
 theory of the Protectorate, as it was held aud even acted on at 
 this period of history. As a proof of the ruinous lengths to which 
 Roman generosity might proceed, he could have pointed to the 
 Numidian war now in the sixth year of its disastrous course. The 
 darker side of the Protectorate — the rapacity of the individual 
 adventurer — was no creation of the government, and needed not 
 to be reproduced on the canvas of the bright picture which he drew. 
 The hopes held out to Bocchus were genuine enough ; the burden 
 of his alliance was but slight, its security immense. 
 
 The king seemed impressed by the gracious overtures of the 
 commissioners. His answer was not only friendly, but apologetic.^ 
 He urged that he had not taken up arms in any spirit of hostility 
 to Rome, but simply for the purpose of defending his own frontiers. 
 He claimed that the territory near the Muluccha, which had been 
 harried by Marius, did not belong to Jugurtha at all. He had 
 expelled the Numidian king from this region and it was his by the 
 right of war.' He appealed finally to the fact of his own former 
 
 ' Sail. yug. 102. 5. '^ Ibid. 102. 12. ^ P. 441. 
 
456 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 105 
 
 embassy to Rome ; he had made a genuine effort to secure her 
 friendship, but this had been repulsed.^ He was, however, willing 
 to forget the past ; and, if Marius permitted, he would like to send 
 a fresh embassy to the senate. This last request was provisionally 
 granted by the commissioners ; Bocchus, in making it, showed a 
 wise and, in consideration of some of the events of this very war,^ 
 a natural sense of the insecurity of the promises made by Roman 
 commanders, at the same time as he exhibited a justifiable 
 faith in a word once given by the great organ of the Republic. 
 Yet, when the commissioners had taken their departure, his old 
 hesitancy seemed to revive. He consented at least to listen to 
 those of his advisers who still urged the claims of Jugurtha.^ They 
 had raised their voices again, either at the time when the Roman 
 commissioners were waiting on Bocchus, or immediately after their 
 departure ; for Jugurtha had no sooner learnt of his father-in-law's 
 renewed negotiations with Rome than he had used every means 
 (amongst others, we are told, that of costly gifts) to induce his 
 Mauretanian supporters to advocate his cause. 
 
 A further stage in the negotiations was reached before the 
 winter season was over, although it is probable that, at the time 
 when this next step was taken by the Mauretanian king, the new 
 year had been passed and the advent of spring was not far off. 
 Marius, who was not fettered in his operations by respect for the 
 traditional seasons which were deemed suitable to a campaign, had 
 started with some flying columns of infantry and a portion of the 
 cavalry to some desert spot, with a view to besiege a fortress still 
 held by Jugurtha, and garrisoned by all the deserters from the 
 Roman army who were now in the king's service. Sulla had 
 been left with the usual title of pro-praetor to represent his ab- 
 sent commander. To the headquarters of the winter camp* 
 Bocchus now sent five of his closest friends, men chosen for their 
 approved loyalty and ability.* His last access of hesitancy, if it 
 were more than a semblance, had certainly been shortlived, and 
 
 1 Cf. Sail. Jug. 8o. 4. See p. 349. 
 
 * P. 373- ' Sail. yug. 102. 15. 
 
 ■* The headquarters were doubtless Cirta, to which we find Marius returning 
 (Ihid. 104. i) ; but shortly afterwards we find Sulla and the envoys coming to Cirta 
 from a place which, according to one reading, is called Tucca (see p. 457). All the 
 troops were probably not concentrated at Cirta, as Marius meant to quarter them 
 in the coast-towns {Ibid. 100. i). 
 
 " Ihid. 103. ^. 
 
105 B.C.] NEGOTIATIONS WITH BOCCHUS 457 
 
 the envoys were given full powers to arrange the terms of peace. 
 They had set out with all speed to reach the Roman winter camp, 
 but their journey had been long and painful. They had been seized 
 and plundered on the route by Gaetulian brigands, and now 
 appeared panic-stricken and in miserable plight before the repre- 
 sentative of Rome. Stripped of their credentials and the symbols 
 of their high office, they expected to be treated as vagrant im- 
 postors from a hostile state ; Sulla received them with the lavish 
 dignity that might be the due of princes. The simple nomads 
 felt the charm and the surprise of this first glimpse of the public 
 manners of Rome. Was it possible that these kindly and courteous 
 men were the spoilers of the world .'' The rumour must be the false 
 invention of the enemies of the bounteous Republic. The untrained 
 mind rapidly argues from the part to the whole, and Sulla's tact 
 had done a great service to his country. He had also established 
 a claim on the Mauretanian king,^ and this personal tie was not to 
 be without its consequences. 
 
 The envoys revealed to the quaestor the instructions of their 
 master, and asked his help and advice in the mission that lay before 
 them. They dwelt with pardonable pride on the wealth, the 
 magnificence, and the honour of their king, and dilated on every 
 point in which the alliance with such a potentate was likely to 
 serve the cause of Rome.^ Sulla promised them the plenitude of 
 his help ; he instructed them in the mode in which they should 
 address Marius, in which they should approach the senate, and 
 continued to be their host for forty days, until his commander was 
 ready to listen to their proposals and forward them on their way. 
 When Marius returned to Cirta after the successful completion of 
 his brief campaign, and heard of the arrival of the envoys, he asked 
 Sulla to bring them ^ to his quarters, and made preparations for 
 assembling as formal a council as the resources of the province per- 
 mitted. A praetor happened to be within its limits and several 
 men of senatorial rank. All these sat to listen to the proposals 
 
 1 Sail. Jug. 104. 3. ' Ibid. 103. 7. 
 
 ' Sulla and the envoys were now at a place which variant readings make either 
 Tucca or Utica {Ihid. 104. i Illosque et Sullam [ah Tucca or Utica] venire jubet, 
 item L. Bellienum praetorem Utica). Utica is rendered improbable by its mention 
 a few words later, although it is possible that the name of this town has been 
 duplicated in the sentence. If we keep Tucca, it cannot be Thugga (Dugga) in 
 Numidia, which is some distance from the coast. It may be the town which 
 Pliny {fiiit. Nat. v. 2. 21) calls " oppidum Tucca inpositum mari et flumini Amp- 
 sagae". 
 
458 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 105 
 
 made by Bocchus. The verdict of the council was in favour of the 
 genuineness of the king's appeal, and the proconsul granted the 
 envoys permission to make their way to Rome. They asked an 
 armistice for their king ^ until the mission should be completed. 
 Loud and angry voices were heard in protest — the voices of the 
 narrow and suspicious men who are haunted by the fixed conviction 
 that a request for a cessation of hostilities is always a treacherous at- 
 tempt at renewed preparations for war. But Sulla and the majority 
 of the board supported the request of the envoys, and the wiser 
 counsel at length prevailed. The embassy now divided ; two of 
 its members returned to their king, while three were escorted to 
 Rome by Cnaeus Octavius Ruso, a quaestor who had brought the 
 last instalment of pay for the army and was ready for his return 
 homewards. The language of the envoys before the Roman senate 
 assumed the apologetic tone which had been suggested by Sulla. 
 Their king, they said, had erred ; Jugurtha had been the cause of 
 this error. Their master asked that Rome should admit him to 
 treaty relations with herself, that she should call him her Mend. 
 It is not impossible that these negotiations had a secret history ; 
 that Bocchus was told of some very material reward that he might 
 expect, if Jugurtha were surrendered. But the assumption is not 
 necessary. The magic of the name of Rome had fired the imagina- 
 tion of the African king at the commencement of the struggle ; 
 now that his fears were quieted, the end, in whatever form it was 
 attained, may have seemed supremely desirable in itself. His 
 envoys had been schooled by Sulla to expect much more than was 
 promised and to read the senate's words aright. Certainly, if a 
 prize had been offered for Bocchus's fidelity, the offer was carefully 
 concealed. The official form in which the government accepted the 
 petitioner's request, granted a free pardon and expressed a cold pro- 
 bation. " The senate and Roman people (so ran the resolution) are 
 used to be mindful of good service and of wrongs. Since Bocchus 
 is penitent for the past, they excuse his fault. He will be granted 
 a treaty and the name of friend, when he has proved that he 
 deserves the grant." ^ 
 
 When Bocchus received this answer, he despatched a letter to 
 Marius asking that Sulla should be sent to advise with him on the 
 
 ^ It is possible that this armistice included Jugurtha as well, although this is not 
 stated by Sallust (Sail. Jug. 104. 2). 
 ' Ibid. 104. 5. 
 
105 B.C.] THE MISSION OF SULLA 459 
 
 matters that touched the common interests of himself and Rome.^ 
 It was tolerably clear what the subject of interest was. If it could 
 be made " common," the end of the war had been reached. Sulla 
 was despatched, and the final triumph, if attained, would be that of 
 the diplomatist, not of the soldier. The quaestor was accompanied 
 by an escort of cavalry, slingers, and archers, and a cohort of Italians 
 bearing the weapons of a skirmishing force ; for the adventures of 
 Bocchus's envoys had shown the insecurity of the route. On the 
 fifth day of the march, a large body of horse was seen approaching 
 from a distance — a force that looked larger and more threatening 
 than it afterwards proved to be ; for it rode in open order, and the 
 wild evolutions of the horsemen seemed to be the preliminary to 
 an attack. Sulla's escort sprang to their arms ; but the returning 
 scouts soon removed all sense of fear. The approaching band of 
 cavalry proved to be but a thousand strong and their leader to be 
 Volux the son of Bocchus. The prince saluted Sulla and told him 
 that he had been sent to meet and escort him to the presence of the 
 king. For two days the combined forces advanced together, and 
 there were no adventures by the road ; but on the evening of the 
 second day, when their resting place had been already chosen, the 
 Moorish prince came hastily to Sulla with a look of perplexity on 
 his face. He said that his scouts had just informed him that Ju- 
 gurtha was close at hand, he entreated Sulla to join him in flight 
 from the camp while it was yet night.^ The request was met by an 
 indignant refusal ; Sulla pointed to his men, whose lives might be 
 sacrificed by the disgraceful disappearance of their leader. But, 
 when Volux shifted his ground and merely insisted on the utility 
 of a march by night from the dangerous neighbourhood, the quaestor 
 yielded assent. He ordered that the soldiers should take their 
 evening meal, and that a large number of fires should be lit 
 which were to be left burning in the deserted camp. At the first 
 watch the Moors and Romans stole silently from the lines. The 
 dawn found them jaded, heavy with sleep, and longing for rest. 
 Sulla was supervising the measurement of a camp, when some Moor- 
 ish horsemen galloped up with the news that Jugurtha was but two 
 miles in advance of their position. It was clear that the anxious 
 Numidian was watching their every movement ; the question to be 
 answered was " Was Prince Volux in the plot ? " The facts seemed 
 
 ' Sail. jfug. 105. 1. " Ibid. 106. 2. 
 
460 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 105 
 
 dark enough to justify any suspicion. The nerves of the Romans 
 had been shaken by the unknown danger which had forced them to 
 leave their camp, by the night of sleepless watchfulness which had 
 followed its abandonment. A panic was the inevitable result, and 
 panic leads to fury. Voices were raised that the Moorish traitor 
 should be slain, and that, if the fruit of his treason was reaped, he 
 at least should not be allowed to see it. Sulla himself was weighed 
 down with the same suspicion that animated his men, but he would 
 not allow them to lay violent hands on the Moor.^ He encouraged 
 them as best he might, then he turned with a passionate protest on 
 his dubious companion. He called the protecting god of his own 
 race, the guardian of its international honour, Jupiter Maximus, to 
 witness the crime and perfidy of Bocchus, and he ordered Volux to 
 leave his camp. The unhappy prince was probably in a state of 
 genuine terror of Jugurtha, of complete uncertainty as to the in- 
 tentions of that jealous kinsman and ally. Even had Volux known 
 that his father Bocchus wished to play a double game, to balance 
 the helplessness of Sulla against that of Jugurtha, to hold two valu- 
 able hostages in his hands at once, how could he be certain that 
 Jugurtha would be content to play the part of a mere pawn in the 
 king's game, to be dependent for his safety on the passing whim 
 of a man whom he distrusted ? Jugurtha might have everything to 
 gain by massacring the Romans and seizing Sulla. The act would 
 compromise Bocchus hopelessly in the eyes of the Roman government. 
 There was hardly a man that would not believe in his treason, and 
 from that time forth Bocchus would have no choice but to be the 
 firm ally of Numidia against the vengeance of Rome. Yet, if Volux 
 acted or spoke as though he believed in the possibility of this issue, 
 he might seem to be incriminating his father and himself, he might 
 seem to deserve the stern rebuke of Sulla and the order of expulsion 
 from the Roman camp. His fears must therefore be concealed and 
 he must profess a confidence which he did not feel. With tears 
 which may have expressed a genuine emotion, he entreated SuUa 
 not to harbour the unworthy suspicion. There had been no pre- 
 concerted treachery ; the danger was at the most the product of the 
 cunning of Jugurtha, who had discovered their route. Volux im- 
 plied that the object of the Numidian's movement was to compromise 
 the Moorish government in the eyes of Sulla; but he stated his 
 
 1 Sail. yug. 107. 1. 
 
105 B.C.] THE MISSION OF SULLA 461 
 
 emphatic belief that Jugurtha would, or could, do no positive hurt 
 to the Roman envoy or his retinue. He pointed out that the king 
 had no great force at his command, and (what was more important 
 still) that he was now wholly dependent on the favour of his father- 
 in-law. It was incredible, he maintained, that Jugurtha would 
 attempt any overt act of hostility, when the son of Bocchus was 
 present to be a witness to the crime. Their best plan would be to 
 show their indifference to his schemes, to ride in broad daylight 
 through the middle of his camp. If Sulla wished, he would send on 
 the Moorish escort, or leave it where it was and ride with him alone. 
 
 It was one of those situations which are the supreme tests of the 
 qualities of a man. Sulla knew that his life depended on the caprice, 
 or the momentary sense of self-interest, of a barbarian who was 
 believed to have shrunk from no crime and on whose head Rome 
 had put a price. Yet he did not hesitate. He passed with Volux 
 through the lines of Jugurtha's camp, and the desperate Numidian 
 never stirred. What motive held his hand was never known ; it 
 may have been that Jugurtha never intended violence ; yet the 
 failure of his plan of compromising Bocchus might well have stirred 
 such a ready man to action ; it may have been that he still relied on his 
 influence with the Mauretanian king, which was perpetuated by his 
 agents at the court. But some believed that his inaction was due 
 to surprise, and that the transit of Sulla through the hostile camp 
 was one of those actions which are rendered safe by their very 
 boldness.^ 
 
 In a few days the travellers had reached the spot where Bocchus 
 held his court. The secret advocates of Numidia and Rome were 
 already in possession of the king.^ Jugui-tha's representative was 
 Aspar, a Numidian subject who had been sent by his master as soon 
 as the news had been brought of Bocchus's demand for the presence 
 of Sulla. He had been sent to watch the negotiations and, if pos- 
 sible, to plead his monarch's cause. The advocate of Rome was 
 Dabar, also a Numidian but of the royal line and therefore hostile 
 to Jugurtha. He was a grandson of Masinissa, but not by legiti- 
 mate descent, for his father had been born of a concubine of the 
 king.' His great parts had long recommended him to Bocchus, 
 
 1 Sail. Jug. 107. 6. Cf. Plut. Sulla 3. 2 jji^j. 108. 
 
 * This is apparently the meaning of Sallust (Ibid. 108. i) when he describes 
 Dabar as Massugradae filius, ex gente Masinissae, ceterum materno genere in- 
 par (nam pater ejus ex concubina ortus erat). 
 
462 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 105 
 
 and his known loyalty to Rome made him a useful intermediary 
 with the representative of that power. He was now sent to Sulla 
 with the intimation that Bocchus was ready to meet the wishes of 
 the Roman people ; that he asked Sulla himself to choose a day, an 
 hour and a place for a conference ; that the understandmg, which 
 already existed between them, remained wholly unimpaired. The 
 presence of a representative of Jugurtha at the court should cause 
 no uneasiness. This representative was only tolerated because there 
 was no other means of lulling the suspicion of the Numidian king. 
 We do not know what Sulla made of this presentment of the case ; 
 but somewhere in the annals of the time there was to be found an 
 emphatic conviction that Bocchus was still playing a double game, 
 that he was still revolving in his mind the respective merits of a 
 surrender of Jugurtha to the Romans and of Sulla to Jugurtha ; ^ 
 that his fears prompted the first step, his inclinations the second, 
 and that this internal struggle was waged throughout the whole of 
 the tortuous negotiations which ensued. 
 
 Sulla, in accepting the promised interview, replied that he did 
 not object to the presence of Jugurtha's legate at the preliminaries ; 
 but that most of what he wished to say was for the king's ear alone, 
 or at least for those of a very few of his most trusted counsellors. 
 He suggested the reply that he expected from the king, and after 
 a short interval was led into Bocchus's presence. At this meeting 
 he gave the barest intimation of his mission ; he had been sent, he 
 said, by the proconsul ^ to ask the king whether he intended peace or 
 war. It had been arranged that Bocchus should make no immedi- 
 ate answer to this question, but should reserve his reply for another 
 date. The king now adjourned the audience to the tenth day, in- 
 timating that on that day his intention would be decided and his 
 reply prepared. Sulla and Bocchus both retired to their respective 
 camps ; but the king was restless, and at a late hour of that very 
 night a message reached Sulla entreating an immediate and secret 
 interview. No one was present but Dabar, the trusty go-between, 
 and interpreters whose secrecy was assured. The narrative of this 
 momentous meeting ' is therefore due to Sulla, whose fortunate pos- 
 
 1 Sail. yug. io8. 3 Sed ego conperior Bocchum magis Punica fide quam ob ea, 
 quae praedicabat, simul Romanos at Numidam spa pacis attinuisse, multumque cum 
 animo suo volvare solitum, Jugurtham Romanis an illi SuUam traderet ; lubidinem 
 advorsum nos, metum pro nobis suasisse. 
 
 ' Ibid. log, 2 Dicit se tnissum a consule. Marius was really proconsul. 
 
 ' Ibid. 1 10. 
 
105 B.C.] CONFERENCE OF SULLA AND BOCCHUS 468 
 
 session of literary tastes has revealed a bit of secret history to the 
 world. The king began with some complimentary references to his 
 visitor, an acknowledgment of the great debt that he owed him, a 
 hope that his benefactor would never be weary of attempting to 
 exhaust his boundless gratitude. He then passed to the question 
 of his own future relations with Rome. He repeated the assertion, 
 which he had made on the occasion of Sulla's earlier visit, that he 
 had never made, or even wished for, war with the people of Rome, 
 that he had merely protected his frontiers against armed aggression. 
 But he was willing to waive the point. He would impose no hin- 
 drance to the Romans waging war with Jugurtha in any way they 
 pleased. He would not press his claim to the disputed territory 
 east of the Muluccha. He would be content to regard that river, 
 which had been the boundary between his own kingdom and that 
 of Micipsa, as his future frontier. He would not cross it himself 
 nor permit Jugurtha to pass within it. If Sulla had any further 
 request to urge, which could be fairly made by the petitioner and 
 honourably granted by himself, he would not refuse it. 
 
 A strict and safe neutrality was the tentacle put out by Bocchus. 
 The only shadow of a positive service by which he proposed to de- 
 serve the alliance of Rome, was the abandonment of a highly dis- 
 putable claim to a part of Jugurtha's possessions. It was certainly 
 time to bring the monarch to the real point at issue, and Sulla 
 pressed it home. He began by a brief acknowledgment of the 
 complimentary references which the king had made to himself, and 
 then indulged in some plain speaking as to the expectations which 
 the Roman government had formed of their would-be ally.^ He 
 pointed out that the offers made by Bocchus were scarcely needed 
 by Rome. A power that possessed her military strength would 
 not be likely to regard them in the light of favours. Something 
 was expected which could be seen to subserve the interests of Rome 
 far more than those of the king himself. The service was patent. 
 He had Jugurtha in his power; if he handed him over to Rome, 
 her debt would certainly be great, and it would be paid. The recog- 
 nition of friendship, the treaty which he sought, and the portion of 
 Numidia which he claimed — all these would be his for the asking. 
 The king drew back ; he urged the sacred bonds of relationship, the 
 scarce less sacred tie of the treaty which bound him to his son-in- 
 law ; he emphasised the danger to himself of such a flagrant breach 
 
 1 Sail. Jug. III. 
 
464 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. los 
 
 of faith. It might alienate the hearts of his subjects, who loved 
 Jugurtha and hated the name of Rome.^ But Sulla continued to 
 press the point ; the king's resistance seemed to give way, and at 
 last he promised to do everything that his persistent visitor de- 
 manded. It was agreed, however, between the two conspiratore 
 that it was necessary to preserve a semblance of peaceful relations 
 with Jugurtha. A pretence must be made of admitting him to the 
 terms of the convention ; this would be a ready bait, for he was 
 thoroughly tired of the war. Sulla agreed to this arrangement as 
 the only means of entrapping his victim ; to Bocchus it may have 
 had another significance as well ; it still left his hands free. 
 
 The next day witnessed the beginning of the machinations that 
 were to end in the sacrifice of a Numidian king or a Roman magis- 
 trate. Bocchus summoned Aspar, the agent of Jugurtha, and told 
 him that a communication had been received from Sulla to the 
 effect that terms might be considered for bringing the war to a 
 close ; he therefore asked the legate to ascertain the views of his 
 sovereign.^ Aspar departed joyfully to the headquarters of Ju- 
 gurtha, who was now at a considerable distance from the scene of 
 the negotiations. Eight days later he returned with all speed, bear- 
 ing a message for the ear of Bocchus. Jugurtha, it appeared, was 
 willing to submit to any conditions. But he had little confidence 
 in Marius. It had often happened that terms of peace sanctioned 
 by Roman generals had been declared invalid. But there was a 
 way of obtaining a guarantee. If Bocchus wished to secure their 
 common interests and to enjoy an undisputed peace, he should 
 arrange a meeting of all the principals to the agreement, on the 
 pretext of discussing its terms. At that meeting Sulla should be 
 handed over to Jugurtha. There could be no doubt that the pos- 
 session of such a hostage would wring the consent of the senate 
 and people to the terms of the treaty ; for it was incredible that 
 the Roman government would leave a member of the nobility, who 
 had been captured while performing a public duty, in the power of 
 his foes. 
 
 Bocchus after some reflection consented to this course. Then, 
 as later, it was a disputed question whether the king had even at 
 this stage made up his mind as to his final course of action.' When 
 
 ' Sail. yug. in. 2. s Ibid. 112. I. 
 
 ' Haec Maurus secum ipse diu volvens tandem promisit, ceterum dolo an vere 
 cunctatus parum comperimus (Ibid. 113, i). 
 
105 B.C.] BETRAYAL OF JUGURTHA 465 
 
 the time and place for the meeting had been arranged, the nature 
 of the treachery was still uncertain. At one moment the king 
 was holding smiling converse with Sulla, at another with the envoy 
 of Jugurtha. Precisely the same promises were made to both ; 
 both were satisfied and eager for the appointed day. On the 
 evening before the meeting Bocchus summoned a council of his 
 friends ; then the whirn^ took him that they should be dismissed, 
 and he passed some time in silent thought. Before the night was 
 out he had sent for Sulla, and it was the cunning of the Roman 
 that set the final toils for the Numidian. At break of day the 
 news was brought that Jugurtha was at hand. Bocchus, attended 
 by a few friends and the Roman quaestor, advanced as though to 
 do him honour, and halted on some rising ground which put the 
 chief actors in the drama in full view of the men who lay in am- 
 bush. Jugurtha proceeded to the same spot amidst a large retinue 
 of his friends ; it had been agreed that all the partners to the con- 
 ference should come unarmed.^ A sign was given, and the men 
 of the ambuscade had sprung from every side upon the mound. 
 Jugurtha's retinue was cut down to a man ; the king himself was 
 seized, bound and handed over to Sulla. In a short while he was 
 the prisoner of Marius. 
 
 Every one had long known that the war would be closed with the 
 capture of the king. Marius could leave for other fields and dream 
 other dreams of glory. But even the utter collapse of resistance in 
 Numidia did not obviate the necessity for a considerable amount 
 of detailed labour, which absorbed the energy of the commander 
 during the closing months of the year. Even when news had been 
 brought from Rome that a grateful people had raised him to the 
 consulship for the second time, and that a task greater than that 
 of the Numidian war had been entrusted to his hand,^ he did not 
 immediately quit the African province, and it is probable that at 
 least the initial steps of the new settlement of Numidia determined 
 by the senate, were taken by him. The settlement was character- 
 istic of the imperialism of the time. The government declined to 
 extend the evils of empire westward and southward, to make of 
 Mauretania another Numidia, and to enter on a course of border 
 
 ^ This must have been the agreement, although Sallust says only Eodem 
 Numida cum plerisque necessariis inermis, uti dictum erat, adcedit (Sail. ^ug. 
 113. 6). 
 
 2 Ibid. 114. 3. 
 
 30 
 
466 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 105 
 
 warfare with the tribes that fringed the desert. It therefore re- 
 fused to recognise Numidia as a province. In default of an abler 
 ruler, Gauda was set upon the throne of his ancestors ; ^ he had 
 long had the support of Marius,=' and seems indeed to have been 
 the only legitimate claimant. But he was not given the whole of 
 the realm which had been swayed by Masinissa and Micipsa. The 
 aspirations of Bocchus for an extension of the limits of Mauretania 
 had to be satisfied, partly because it would have been ungenerous 
 and impolitic to deprive of a reward that had been more than 
 hinted at,^ a man who had violated his own personal inclinations 
 and the national traditions of the subjects over whom he ruled, for 
 the purpose of performing a signal service to Rome ; partly because 
 it would have been dangerous to the future peace of Numidia, and 
 therefore of Rome, to leave the question of Bocchus's claims to 
 territory east of the Muluccha unsettled, especially with such a 
 ruler as Gauda on the throne. The western part of Numidia was 
 therefore attached to the kingdom of Mauretania; nearly five 
 hundred miles of coast line may have been transferred, and the 
 future boundary between the two dominions may have been the 
 port of Saldae on the west of the Numidian gulf.* The wisdom of 
 this settlement is proved by its success. Until Rome herself be- 
 comes a victim to civil strife, and her exiles or conquerors play for 
 
 1 Gauda is called king in an inscription which gives the whole house of Juba 
 II. The inscription (C. I. L. II. n. 3417) runs : — Regi Jubae reg(is) Jubae filio 
 regi(s) lempsalis n. regis Gau(dae) pronepoti regis Masiniss(ae) pronepotis nepoti 
 Ilvir quinq. patrono coloni (the coloni, who set up the inscription, having made 
 Juba II irvir quinquennalis honoris causa). The only doubt which affects the belief 
 in Gauda's succession arises from a passage in Cic. post Red. ad Quir. 8. 20. 
 Cicero here says (Marius) cum parva navicula pervectus in Africam, quibus regna 
 ipse dederat, ad eos inops supplexque venisset. There can be no doubt that 
 Marius fled to Hiempsal, not to Gauda. But it has been pointed out that Cicero's 
 expression is " ad eos," not "ad eum ". The plural probably refers to the whole 
 "domus" of the monarch and would include both Gauda and Hiempsal. See 
 Biereye Res Numidarum et Maurorum p. 7. 
 
 »P.4i3. 'P. 463- . . , , ^ ^ 
 
 * Mauretania subsequently includes the region of Caesariensis, but it has been 
 thought probable that the territory of Sitifis on the east was not added until the new 
 settlement in 46 B.C. (Mommsen Hist, of Rome bk. iv. c. 4). The territory between 
 the Muluccha and Saldae might, therefore, have been added after the close of the 
 war with Jugurtha. See Miiller Numismatique de I'Afrique p. 4; Mommsen I.e.; 
 Gobel Die Westkiiste Afrikas im Altertum p. 93 ; Biereye op. cit. p. 6. 
 
 It is very questionable whether the limits of the Roman province were in 
 any way extended at the expense of Numidia. Such additions as Vaga and Sicca 
 probably belong to the settlement of 46 B.C. See Tissot Geogr. comp. ii. pp. 21 
 foil. It has sometimes been thought that the attachment of Leptis Magna to Rome 
 (p. 429) was permanent (Wilmanns in C. I. L. viii. p. 2) and that Tripolis becaine 
 a part of the Roman province (Marquardt Staatsverw. i. p. 465), but Tissot (op. ctf. 
 ii. p. 22) believes that Leptis remained 3 free city. 
 
105 B.C.] CLOSE OF THE NUMIDIAN WAR 467 
 
 the help of her own subjects, Numidia ceases to be a factor in 
 Roman politics. The mischief of interfering in dynastic questions 
 had been made too patent to permit of the rash repetition of the 
 dangerous experiment. 
 
 In comparison with the settlement of Numidia, the ultimate 
 fate of its late king was a matter of little concern. But Jugurtha 
 had played too large a part in history to permit either the historian, 
 or the lounger of the streets who jostled his neighbour for the 
 privilege of gazing with hungry eyes at the visage and bearing 
 of the terrible warrior, to be wholly indifferent to his end. The 
 prisoner was foredoomed. Had he not for years been treated as an 
 escaped criminal, not as a hostile king ? If one ignored his out- 
 rages on his own race, had he not massacred Roman merchants, 
 prompted the treacherous slaughter of a Roman gan-ison, and 
 devised the murder of a client of the Roman people in the very 
 streets of Rome? In truth, a formidable indictment might be 
 brought against Jugurtha, nor was it the care of any one to dis- 
 criminate which of the counts referred to acts of war, and which must 
 be classed in the category of merely private crimes. It was suffi- 
 cient that he was an enemy (which to the Roman mind meant traitor) 
 who had brought death to citizens and humiliation to the State, 
 and it is probable that, had the Numidian been the purest knight 
 whose chivalrous warfare had shaken the power of Rome, he would 
 have taken that last journey to the Capitol. It was the custom of 
 Rome, and any derogation of the iron rule was an act of singular 
 grace. The stupidity of the mob, which is closely akin to its 
 brutality, was utterly unable to distinguish between the differences 
 in conduct which are the result of the varying ethical standards of 
 the races of the world, or even to balance the enormities com- 
 mitted by their own commanders against those which could be 
 fastened on the enemy whom they had seized. And this lack of 
 imagination was reflected in a cultured government, partly because 
 their culture was superficial and they were still the products of the 
 grim old school which had produced their ferocious ancestors, partly 
 for reasons that were purely politic. The light hold which Rome 
 held over her dependants, could only be rendered light by acts of 
 occasional severity ; the world must be made to see the consequences 
 of rebellion against a sovereign. But the true justification for 
 Roman rigour was not dependent on such considerations, which are 
 often of a highly disputable kind, nearly so much as on the normal 
 
468 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 104 
 
 attitude of the Roman mind itself. Cruelty was but an expression 
 of Roman patriotism ; with characteristic consistency they applied 
 much the same views to their citizens and their subjects, and their 
 treatment of captured enemies was but one expression of the spmt 
 which found utterance in their own terrible law of treason. 
 
 When Marius celebrated his triumph on the 1st of January in 
 the year which followed the close of the Numidian war,^ Jugurtha 
 and his two sons walked before his chariot. While the pageant 
 lasted, the king still wore his royal robes in mockery of his former 
 state ; when it had reached its bourne on the Capitol, the degrada- 
 tion and the punishment were begun. But it was believed by 
 some that neither could now be felt, and that it was a madman 
 bhat was pushed down the narrow stair which leads to the rock- 
 hewn dungeon below the hill.^ His tunic was stripped from him, 
 the golden rings wrested from his ears, and, as the son of the 
 south ^ stepped shivering into the well-like cavern, the cry " Oh ! 
 what a cold bath ! " burst from his lips. Of the stories as to how 
 the end was reached, the more detailed speaks of a protracted 
 agony of six days until the prisoner had starved to death, his 
 weakened mind clinging ever to the hope that his life might yet 
 be spared.* 
 
 The minor prize of the Numidian war was a quantity of treasure 
 — including more than three thousand pounds' weight of gold and 
 over five thousand of silver * — which was shown in the triumph of 
 Marius before it was deposited in the treasury. It was indeed the 
 only permanent prize of the war which could be exhibited to the 
 people ; if one excepted two triumphs and the recognition of the 
 merit of three officials, there was nothing else to show. It was 
 
 ^ Sail. Jug. 114. 3 ; Liv. Ep. Ixvii ; C. I. L. i. n. xxxiii p. 290 Eum (Jugurtham) 
 cepit et triumphans in secundo consulatu ante currum suum duci jussit . . . veste 
 triumphali calceis patriciis [? in senatum venit]. It is questionable, however, 
 whether the last words of this Arretine inscription (words which do not immediately 
 follow the account of the Numidian triumph) can be brought into connection with 
 the story told by Plutarch {Mar. 12) that Marius, either through forgetfulness or 
 clumsiness, entered the senate in his triumphal dress. They seem to refer to some 
 special honours conferred after the defeat of the Germanic tribes. It is possible that 
 the conferment of this honour gave rise to the malicious story, which became not 
 only distorted but misplaced. 
 
 ' Plut. Mar. 12. 
 
 ' Ihne Rom. Gesch. v. p. 164 Wo dem Sohn des Siidens der Schmerzenschrei 
 entfuhr. 
 
 * Plut. Mar. 12. The epitomator of Livy (Ixvii.) says in carcere necatus est. 
 The word necatus is quite consistent with a death such as that described by Plutarch. 
 See Festus, pp. 162, 178. 
 
 » Plut. l.c. 
 
LESSONS OF THE WAR 469 
 
 difficult to justify the war even on defensive grounds, for it would 
 have required a courageous advocate to maintain that the mere re- 
 cognition of Jugurtha as King of Numidia would have imperilled 
 the Roman possessions in Africa ; and, if the struggle had assumed 
 an anti-Roman character, this result had been assisted, if not 
 secured, by the tactics of the opposition which had systematically 
 foiled every attempt at compromise. But a war, which it is diffi- 
 cult to justify and still more difficult to remember with satisfac- 
 tion, may be the necessary result of a radically unsound system of 
 administration : and the disasters which it entails may be equally 
 the consequence of a military system, excellent in itself but ill- 
 adapted to the circumstances of the country in which the struggle 
 is waged. These are the only two points of view from which 
 the Numidian war is remarkable on strategic or administrative 
 grounds. The strategic difficulties of the task do nothing more 
 than exhibit the wisdom of the majority of the senate, and of 
 the earlier generals engaged in the campaign, in seeking to avoid 
 a struggle at almost any cost. A military system is conditioned 
 by the necessities of its growth ; even that of an empire is seldom 
 sufficiently elastic to be equally adapted to every country and 
 equally capable of beating down every form of armed resistance. 
 The Roman system had been evolved for the type of warfare which 
 was common to the civilised nations around the Mediterranean 
 basin — nations which employed heavily armed and fully equipped 
 soldiers as the main source of their fighting strength, and which 
 were forced to operate within a narrow area, on account of the 
 possession of great centres of civilisation which it was imperative to 
 defend. Its mobility was simply the mobility of a heavy force of 
 infantry with a circumscribed range of action ; in the days of its 
 highest development it was still strikingly weak in cavalry. It had 
 already shown itself an imperfect instrument for putting down the 
 guerilla warfare of Spain ; it had never been intended for the 
 purposes of desert warfare, or to effect the pacification of nomad 
 tribes extending over a vast and desolate territory. Even as the 
 Parthian war of Trajan required the formation of what was prac- 
 tically a new army developed on unfamiliar lines, so the complete 
 reorganisation of the Republican system would have been essential 
 to the effective conquest of Numidia. The slight successes of this 
 war, such as the taking of Thala and of Capsa and the victories 
 near Cirta, were attained by judicious adaptations to the new con- 
 
470 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 ditions, by the employment of light infantry and the increased 
 use of cavalry ; but even these improvements were of little avail, 
 for effective pursuit was still impossible, and without pursuit the 
 conflict could not be brought to a close. The unkindness of the 
 conditions almost exonerates the generals who blundered during 
 the struggle, and to an unprejudiced observer the record of incom- 
 petence is slight. The fact that the inconclusive proceedings of 
 Metellus and Marius were deemed successes, almost justifies the 
 exploits of a Bestia, and even the crowning disaster of the war — 
 the surprise of the army of Aulus Albinus — might have been the lot 
 of a better commander opposed to an enemy so far superior in 
 mobility and knowledge of the land. Most wars of this type are 
 destructive of military reputations; the general is fortunate who 
 can emerge as the least incapable of the host of blunderers. If we 
 adopt this relative standard, one fortunate issue of the campaign 
 may be held to be the discovery that Marius was not unworthy 
 of his military reputation. The verdict, it is true, was not justified 
 by positive results ; but it was the verdict of the army that he led 
 and as incapable of being ignored as all such judgments are. His 
 leadership had been characterised at least by efficiency in detail, 
 and this efficiency had been secured by gentle measures, by un- 
 ceasing vigilance, by the cultivation of a true soldierly spirit, 
 and by the untiring example of the commander. The courage of 
 the innovator — a courage at once political and military — had also 
 given Rome, in the mass of the unpropertied classes, a fathomless 
 source from which she could draw an army of professional soldiers, 
 if she possessed the capacity to use her opportunities. 
 
 The political issues of the war were bound up with those which 
 were strategic, both in so far as the hesitancy of the senate to enter 
 on hostilities was based on a just estimate of the difficulties of the 
 campaign, and in so far as the policy of smoothing over difficulties 
 in a client state by diplomatic means, in preference to stming up 
 a hornet's nest by the thrust of the sword, was one of the traditional 
 maxims of the Roman protectorate. But this second issue raised 
 the whole of the great administrative question of the limits of the 
 duties which Rome owed to her client kings. Such a question not 
 infrequently suggests a conflict of duty with interest. The claims 
 of Adherbal for protection against his aggressive cousin might be 
 just, but even to many moderate men, not wholly vitiated by the 
 maxims of a Machiavellian policy, they may have appeared intoler- 
 
LESSONS OF THE WAR 471 
 
 able. Was Rome to waste her own strength and stake the peace 
 of the empire on a mere question of dynastic succession ? Might 
 it not be better to allow the rivals to fight out the question 
 amongst themselves, and then to see whether the man who emerged 
 victorious from the contest was likely to prove a client acceptable 
 and obedient to Rome ? There was danger in the course, no 
 doubt : the danger inherent in a vicious example which might 
 spread to other protected states ; but might it not be a slighter 
 peril than that involved in dethroning a ruler, who had proved his 
 energy and ability, his familiarity with Roman ways, and his know- 
 ledge of Roman methods, above all, his possession of the confidence 
 of the great mass of the Numidian people ? Nay, it might be 
 argued that Adherbal had by his weakness proved his unfitness to 
 be an eflicient agent of Rome. It might be asked whether such a 
 man was likely to be an adequate representative of Roman interests 
 in Africa, an adequate protector of the frontiers of the province. 
 On the other hand, it must be admitted that the advocates of inter- 
 ference had something more than the claim of justice and the 
 claim of prestige on their side. It was an undisputed fact that the 
 division of power in Numidia, at the time when the question was 
 presented to Rome, showed that Adherbal stood for civilisation and 
 Jugurtha for barbarism. This was an issue that might not have 
 been manifest at first, although any one who knew Numidia must 
 have been aware that the military spirit of the country which was 
 embodied in Jugurtha, was not represented in the coast cities with 
 their trading populations drawn from many towns, but in the 
 remote agricultural districts and the deserts of the west and south ; 
 but it was an issue recognised by the commissioners when they 
 assigned the more civilised portion of the kingdom to Adherbal, 
 and the territories, whose strength was the natural wealth and the 
 manhood which they yielded, to his energetic rival ; and it was one 
 that became painfully apparent when Jugurtha led his barbarous 
 hordes against Cirta, and when these hordes in the hour of victory 
 slew every merchant and money-lender whom they could find in the 
 town. It was this aspect of the question that ultimately proved 
 the decisive factor in bringing on the war ; for the claims of justice 
 could now be reinforced by those of interest, and the interest which 
 was at stake was that of the powerful moneyed class at Rome. It 
 was this class that not only forced the government to war, but 
 insisted on seeing the war through to its bitter end. It was 
 
472 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 this class that systematically hindered all attempts at compro- 
 mise, that brandished its control of the courts in the face of every 
 one who strove to temper war with hopes of peace, that tolerated 
 Metellus until he proved too dilatory, and sent out Marius in the 
 vain hope that he might show greater expedition. The close of 
 the war was a singular satire on their policy, a remarkable proof of 
 the justice of the official view. The end came through diplomacy, 
 not through battle, through an unknown quaestor who belonged to 
 the old nobility and possessed its best gifts of facile speech and 
 suppleness in intrigue, not through the great " new man " who was 
 to be a living example of what might be done, if the middle class 
 had the making of the ministers of the State. 
 
 But the moneyed class could hardly have developed the power 
 to force the hand of the council of state, had it not been in union 
 with the third great factor in the commonwealth, that disorganised 
 mass of fluctuating opinion and dissipated voting power which was 
 known as " the people ". How came the Populus Romanus to be 
 stirred to action in this cause, with the result that the balance of 
 power projected by Caius Gracchus was again restored ? Much of 
 their excitement may have been the result of misrepresentation, of 
 the persistent efibrts made by the opposition to prove that all par- 
 leying with the enemy was tantamount to treason ; more must have 
 been due to the dishonouring news of positive disaster which marked 
 a later stage of the war ; but the mingled attitude of resentment 
 and suspicion with which the people was taught to regard its 
 council and its ministers, seems to have been due to the genuine 
 belief that many of the former and nearly all of the latter were 
 hopelessly corrupt. This darkest aspect of the Numidian war is 
 none the less a reality if we believe that the individual charges of 
 corruption were not well founded, and that they were mere party 
 devices meant to mask a policy which would have been impossible 
 without them. The proceedings of the Mamilian commission cer- 
 tainly commanded little respect even from the democrat of a later 
 day ; ^ but it is with the suspicion of corruption, rather than with 
 the justice of that suspicion in individual cases, that we are most 
 intimately concerned. A political society must be tainted to the 
 core, if bribery can be given and accepted as a serious and adequate 
 explanation of the proceedings of its leading members. The sus- 
 
 ' P. 378- 
 
THE RENEWED COALITION 473 
 
 picion was a condemnation of the State rather than of a class. It 
 might be tempting to suppose that the disease was confined to a 
 narrow circle (by a curious accident to the circle actually in 
 power) ; but of what proof did such a supposition admit ? The 
 leaders of the people were themselves members of the senatorial 
 order and scions of the nobility of office. Marius the " new man " 
 might thunder his appeal for a purer atmosphere and a wider field ; 
 but it would be long, if ever, before the councils of the State would 
 be administered by men who might be deemed virtuous because 
 their ancestors were unknown. 
 
 But for a time the view prevailed that the interests of the State 
 could best be served by a combination of powerful directors of 
 financial corporations with patriotic reformers, invested with the 
 tribunate, struggling for higher office, and expressing their views 
 of statecraft chiefly in the form of denunciations of the government. 
 Such a coalition might form a powerful and healthy organ of crit- 
 icism ; but it could only become more by serving as a mere basis 
 for a new executive power. As regards the nature of this power 
 and even the necessity for its existence, the views of the discontented 
 elements of the time were probably as indefinite as those of the 
 adherents of Caius Gracchus. The Republican constitution was an 
 accepted fact, and the senate must at least be tolerated as a necessary 
 element in that constitution ; for no one could dream of finding a 
 coherent administration either in the Comitia or in the aggregate 
 of the magistrates of the people. Now, as at all times since the 
 Roman constitution had attained its full development, the only 
 mode of breaking with tradition in order to secure a given end which 
 the senate was supposed to have neglected, was to employ the ser- 
 vices of an individual. There was no danger in this employment if 
 the individual could be overthrown when his work had been com- 
 pleted, or when the senate had regained its old prestige. The leader 
 elevated to a purely civil magistracy by the suffrages of the people 
 was ever subject to this risk ; if his personal influence outgrew the 
 necessities of his task, if he ceased to be an agent and threatened to 
 be a master, the mere suspicion of an aspiration after monarchy 
 would send a shudder of reaction through the mass of men which 
 had given him his greatness. As long as the cry for reform was 
 based on the existence of purely internal evils, which the temporary 
 power of a domestic magistracy such as the tribunate might heal, 
 the breast even of the most timid constitutionalist did not deserve 
 
474 A HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 to be agitated by alarm for the security of the Republican govern- 
 ment. But what if external dangers called for settlement, if the 
 eyes of the mercantile classes and the proletariate were turned on 
 the spectacle of a foreign commerce in decay and an empire in 
 disorder, if the grand justification for the senate's authority — its 
 government of the foreign dependencies of Rome — were first ques- 
 tioned, then tossed aside ? Would not the individual makeshift 
 have in such a case as this to be invested with military authority ? 
 Might not his power be defended and perpetuated by a weapon 
 mightier than the voting tablet ? Might not his supporters he a 
 class of men, to whom the charms of civil life are few, whose habits 
 have trained them to look for inspiration to an individual, not to a 
 corporation, still less to that abstraction called a constitution — of 
 men not subjected to the dividing influences, or swayed by the 
 momentary passions, of their fellows of the streets ? In such a case 
 might not the power of the individual be made secure, and what 
 was this but monarchy ? 
 
 Such were the reflections suggested to posterity by the power 
 which popularly-elected generals began to hold from the time of the 
 Numidian war. But such were not the reflections of Marius and 
 his contemporaries. There was no precedent and no contemporary 
 circumstance which could suggest a belief in any danger arising 
 from the military power. The experiment of bearding the senate 
 by entrusting the conduct of a campaign to a popular favourite had 
 been tried before, and, whether its immediate results were bene- 
 ficial or the reverse, it had produced no ulterior effects. Whether 
 the people had pinned its faith on men of the nobility such as the 
 two Scipios, or on a man of the people like Varro, such agents had 
 either retired from public life, confessed their incapacity, or returned 
 to serve the State. The armies which such generals had led were 
 composed of well-to-do men who, apart from the annoyance of the 
 levy, had no ground of complaint against the commonwealth : and 
 the change in the recruiting system which had been introduced by 
 Marius, was much too novel and too partial for its consequences to 
 be forecast. Nor could any one be expected to see the fundamental 
 difference between the Rome of but two generations past and the 
 Rome of the day — the difference which sprang from the increasing 
 divergence of the interests of classes, and the consequent weakening 
 of confidence in the one class which had " weathered the storm and 
 been wrecked in a calm ". Aristocracy is the true leveller of merit, 
 
MARIUS AND SULLA 475 
 
 but, if it lose that magic power by ceasing to be an aristocracy, then 
 the turn of the individual has come. 
 
 The fact that it was already coming may justify us in descend- 
 ing from the general to the particular and remarking that the 
 question " Who deserved the credit of bringing the war with Ju- 
 gurtha to an end ? " soon excited an interest which appealed equally 
 to the two parties in the State and the two personalities whom the 
 close of the episode had revealed. It was natural that the success 
 of Sulla should be exploited by resentful members of the nobility as 
 the triumph of the aristocrat over the parvenu, of the old diplomacy 
 and the old bureaucracy over the coarse and childish methods of the 
 opposition ; it was tempting to circulate the view that the humilia- 
 tion of Metellus had been avenged, that the man who had slandered 
 and superseded him had found an immediate nemesis in a youthful 
 member of the aristocracy.* Such a version, if it ever reached the 
 ears of the masses, was heard only to be rejected ; the man who 
 had brought Jugurtha in chains to Rome must be his conqueror, 
 and, even had this evidence been lacking, they did not intend to 
 surrender the glory which was reflected from the champion whom 
 they had created. Nor even in the circles of the governing class 
 could this controversy be for the moment more than a matter for 
 idle or malicious speculation. Hard fighting had to be done against 
 the barbarians of the north, a reorganisation of the army was es- 
 sential, and for both these purposes even they admitted that Marius 
 was the necessary man. Even the two men who were most inter- 
 ested in the verdict were content to stifle for the time, the one the 
 ambitious claim which was strengthened by a belief in its justice, 
 the other the resentful repudiation, which would have been rendered 
 all the more emphatic from the galling sense that it could not be 
 absolute. In the coming campaigns against the Germans Sulla 
 served first as legate and afterwards as military tribune in the army 
 of his old commander.^ But his own conviction of the part which 
 he had played in the Numidian war was expressed in a manner not 
 the less irritating because it gave no reasonable ground for offence. 
 He began wearing a signet ring, the seal of which showed Bocchus 
 delivering Jugurtha into his hand.^ This emblem was destined to 
 grate on the nerves of Marius in a still more offensive form, for 
 thirteen years later, when his work had been done and his glory had 
 
 1 Plut. Mar. 10. ' Plut. Sulla 4. 
 
 3 Plut. Mar, 10 ; Sulla 3. 
 
476 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 106 
 
 begun to wane, Rome was given an unexpected confirmation of the 
 truthfulness of the scene which it depicted. The King of Maure- 
 tania, eager to conciliate the people of Rome while he showed his 
 gratitude to Sulla, sent as a dedicatory offering to the Capitol a 
 group of trophy-bearing Victories who guarded a device wrought in 
 gold, which showed Bocchus surrendering to Sulla the person of 
 the Numidian king. Marius would have had it removed, but 
 Sulla's supportei's could now loudly assert the claim, which had 
 been only whispered when the dark cloud of barbaric invasion 
 hung over the State and the loyal belief of the people in Marius 
 was quickened by their fears.^ 
 
 Yet, although at the close of the Numidian war an appalling 
 danger to the empire tended to perpetuate the coalition that had 
 been formed between the mercantile classes and the proletariate, 
 and to wring from the senate an acceptance of the new military 
 genius with his plans for reform, there ai'e clear indications which 
 prove that an ebb of political feeling had been witnessed even 
 during the last three years — a turn of the tide which shows how 
 utterly unstable the coalition against the senate would have been, 
 had it not been reinforced by the continuance of disasters abroad. 
 The first sign of the reaction was the flattering reception and the 
 triumph of Metellus ; ^ and it may have been this current of feeling 
 which decided the consular elections for the following year. The 
 successful candidates were Caius Atilius Serranus and Quintus 
 Servilius Caepio. Of these Serranus could trace his name back to 
 the great Reguli of Carthaginian fame ; ' the family to which he 
 belonged, although plebeian, had figured amongst the ranks of 
 the official nobility since the close of the fourth centuiy, although 
 it is known to have furnished the State with but five consuls 
 since the time of Caius Regulus. The merit which Serranus 
 possessed in the eyes of the voters who elevated him to his high 
 office, was a puzzle to posterity ; for such nobility as he could 
 boast seemed the only compensation for the lack of intelligence 
 which was supposed to characterise his utterances and his conduct.* 
 But, if we may judge from the resolution which he subsequently 
 
 1 Plut. Sulla 6. 2 P. 435. 
 
 ^ Ancient writers derive the name from serere and connect it with a story of 
 the family of the Reguh (Plin. Hist. Nat. xviii. 3. 20 ; Verg. Aen. vi. 844; Val. Max. 
 iv. 4. 5). But the name appears on coins as " Saranus " (Eckhel v. p. 146). It 
 seems, however, to be true that the name was borne by, or applied to, C. Atilius 
 Regulus, the consul of 257 B.C. See Klebs in Pauly-Wissowa R. E. p. 2095. 
 
 ^ Cic. pro Plane. 5. I2. 
 
106 B.C.] CAEPIO 477 
 
 displayed in combating revolution at Rome,^ he was known to be 
 a supporter of the authority of the senate, and his aristocratic pro- 
 clivities may have led to his association with his more distinguished 
 colleague Caepio. The latter belonged to a patrician clan, and to 
 a branch of that clan which had lately clung to the highest poli- 
 tical prizes with a tenacity second only to that of the Metelli. 
 Caepio's great-grandfather, his grandfather, his father and his two 
 uncles had all filled the consulship ; and his own hereditary claim 
 to that office had been rendered more secure by some good service 
 in Lusitania, which had secured him a military reputation and the 
 triumph which he enjoyed in the very year that preceded his can- 
 didature,^ His political sentiments may have been known before 
 his election ; but the very fact of his elevation to the consulship, 
 and his appreciation of the direction in which the tide of public 
 feeling seemed to be running, gave a definiteness to his views and 
 a courage to his reforming conservatism, which must have surprised 
 his supporters as well as his opponents, and may not have been 
 altogether pleasing to the extreme members of the former party. 
 It must have been believed that a rift was opening between the 
 moneyed classes and the people, and that the latter, satisfied with 
 their recent political triumph and reconciled by the honest passivity 
 of the senate, were content to resume their old allegiance to the 
 governing class. It must even have been held that a spirit of re- 
 pentance and indignation could be awakened at the reckless and 
 selfish use which the knights had made of the judicial power en- 
 trusted to their keeping, that the Mamilian commission could be 
 represented as an outrage on the public conscience, and the ordinary 
 cognisance of public crimes as a reign of terror intended merely to 
 ensure the security of investments.^ The knights were to be at- 
 tacked in their stronghold, and Caepio came forward with a new 
 judiciary law. Two accounts of the scope of this measure have come 
 down to us. According to the one, the bill proposed that juris- 
 diction in the standing criminal courts should be shared between 
 
 ' In the movement connected with the proceedings of Saturninus in loo B.C. 
 (Cic. pro Rab. 7. 21). 
 
 " Eutrop. iv. 27 ; Val. Max. vi. g. 13 ; Fast, triumph. 
 
 * Yet no very recent cases repetundarum are known. The last seenis to have 
 been the accusation of M. Valerius Messala (Gell. xv. 14). About this time C. 
 Flavius Fimbria was accused by M. Gratidius and acquitted in spite of the hostile 
 evidence of M. Aemilius Scaurus (Cic. pro Font. 11. 24; Brut. 45. 168 ; Val. Max. 
 viii. 5. 2 ; ^ein Criminalreckt p. 649) ; but even if, with Rein, we assign this case to 
 106 and not to a time later than Fimbria's consulship, the judiciary law must have 
 been prepared before the trial. 
 
478 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 106 
 
 the senators and the equites ; ^ according to the other, this jurisdic- 
 tion was to be given to the senate.* That the latter result was 
 meant to be attained in some way by the law, is perhaps shown by 
 the intense dislike which the equestrian order entertained in later 
 times to any laudatory reference to the hated Servilian proposal : » 
 and, although a class which has possessed and perhaps abused a 
 monopoly of jurisdiction, may object to seeing even a share of it 
 given to their enemies and their victims, yet this resentment would 
 be still more natural if the threatened transference of jurisdiction 
 from their order was to be complete. But, in any case, we cannot 
 afford to neglect the express testimony to the fact that the senate 
 was to have possession of the courts ; and the only method of 
 reconciling this view with the other tradition of a partition of 
 jurisdiction between the orders, is to suppose that Caepio attempted 
 the effort suggested by Tiberius Gracchus, once advocated by his 
 brother Caius,* and subsequently taken up by the younger Livius 
 Drusus, of increasing the senate by admitting a certain number of 
 knights into that body, and giving the control of the courts to the 
 members of this enlarged council. It may seem a strange and 
 revolutionary step to attempt such a reform of the governing 
 body of the State, whose membership and whose privileges were so 
 jealously guarded, for the purpose of securing a single political 
 end ; it may seem at first sight as though the admission of a con- 
 siderable number of the upper middle class to the power and prizes 
 possessed by the privileged few, would be a shock even to a mildly 
 conservative mind that had fed upon the traditions of the past. 
 Yet a closer examination will reveal the truth that such a change 
 would have meant a very slight modification in the temper and 
 tendencies of the senate, and would have insured a very great in- 
 crease in its security, whether it meant to govern well or ill, to 
 secure its own advantages or those of its suffering subjects. In 
 reality a very thin line parted the interests of the senators from 
 those of the more distinguished members of the equestrian order. 
 It was only when official probity or official selfishness came into 
 
 ' Cassiodor. Chron. Per Servilium Caepionem consulem judicia equitibus et 
 senatoribus communicata. Obsequens loi (39) Per Caepionem cos. senatorum et 
 equitum judicia communicata. 
 
 ^ Tac. Ann. xii. 60 Cum . . . Serviliae leges senatui judicia redderent. 
 
 ^ Cic. de Inv. i. 49. 92 Offensum est quod eorum qui audiunt voluntatem laedif. 
 ut si quis apud equites Romanes cupidos judicandi Caepionis legem judiciariam 
 laudet. 
 
 * Pp- 135. 213- 
 
106 B.C.] CAEPIO'S JUDICIARY LAW 479 
 
 conflict with capitalistic greed, that recrimination was aroused 
 between the two heads of the body politic. But what if official 
 power, under either of its aspects, could make a compromise with 
 greed ? The rough features of both might be softened ; but, at the 
 worst, a stronger, more permanent and, in the long run, more pro- 
 fitable monopoly of the good things of the empire would be the 
 result of the union. The admission of wealthy capitalists could 
 not be considered a very marked social detraction to the dignity 
 of the order. The question of pedigree might be sunk in an 
 amiable community of taste. In point of lavish expenditure and 
 exotic refinement, in the taste that displayed itself in the patron- 
 age of literature, the collection of objects of art, the adornment 
 of country villas, there was little to choose between the capitalist 
 and the noble. And community of taste is an easy passage to 
 community of political sentiment. Any one acquainted with the 
 history of the past must have known that all efforts to temper 
 the exclusiveness of the senatorial order had but resulted in an 
 increase of the spirit of exclusiveness. The patrician council had 
 in old days been stormed by a horde of plebeian chiefs ; but these 
 chiefs, when they had once stepped within the magic circle, had 
 shown not the least inclination to permit their poorer followers to 
 do the same. The successful Roman, practical, grasping, commer- 
 cial and magnificently beneficent, ranking the glory of patron- 
 age as second only in point of worth to the possession and selfish 
 use of power, scarcely attached a value even to the highest birth 
 when deprived of its brilliant accessories, and had always found 
 his bond of fellowship in a close community of interest with others, 
 who helped him to hold a position which he might keep against 
 the world. How much more secure would this position be, if the 
 front rank of the assailants were enticed within the fortress and 
 given strong positions upon the walls ! They would soon drink 
 into their lungs the strong air of possession, they would soon be 
 stiffened by that electric rigidity which falls on a man when he 
 becomes possessed of a vested interest. There was little probability 
 that the knights admitted to the senate would continue to be in 
 any real sense members of the equestrian order. 
 
 But even to a senator who reckoned the increase of profit- 
 sharers, whatever their present or future sentiments might be, as a 
 loss to himself, the sacrifice involved in the proposed increase of 
 the members of his order may have seemed well worthy of the cost. 
 
480 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 106 
 
 For how could power be exercised or enjoyed in the face of a hostile 
 judicature ? The knights had recently made foreign administration 
 on the accepted lines not only impossible in itself, but positively 
 dangerous to the administrator, and in all the details of provincial 
 pohcy they could, if they chose, enforce their views by means of 
 the terrible instrument which Caius Gracchus had committed to 
 their hands. Even if the business men, shorn of their most dis- 
 tinguished members, might still have the power to offer transitory 
 opposition to the senate by coalition with the mob, the more dan- 
 gerous, because more permanent, possibilities of harm which the 
 control of the courts afforded them, would be wholly swept away. 
 
 The attraction of Caepio's proposal to the senatorial mind 
 is, therefore, perfectly intelligible ; but it is veiy probable that 
 there were many members of the nobility who were wholly insen- 
 sible to this attraction. The men who would descend a few steps 
 in order to secure a profitable concord between the orders, may 
 have been in the majority; but there must have been a con- 
 siderable number of stiff-backed nobles who, even if they believed 
 that concord could be secured by a measure which gave away 
 privileges and did not conciliate hostility, were exceedingly un- 
 willing to descend at all. Caepio is the first exponent of a fresh 
 phase of the new conservatism which had animated the elder 
 Drusus. That statesman had sought to win the people over to 
 the side of the senate by a series of beneficent laws, which should 
 be as attractive as those of the demagogue and perhaps of more 
 pei'manent utility than the blessings showered on them by the 
 irresponsible favourite of the moment ; but he had done nothing for 
 the mercantile class ; and his greater son was left to combine the 
 scheme of conciliation transmitted to him by his father with that 
 enunciated by Caepio. 
 
 The moderation and the tactical utility of the new proposal 
 fired the imagination of a man, whose support was of the utmost 
 importance for the success of a measure which was to be submitted 
 to a popular body that was divided in its allegiance, uncertain in 
 its views, and therefore open to conviction by rhetoric if not by 
 argument. It was characteristic of the past career of the young 
 orator Lucius Crassus that he should now have thrown himself 
 wholly on the side of Caepio and the progressive members of the 
 senate.* His past career had committed him to no extremes. He 
 
 ' Cic. Brut. 43. 161 ; pro Cluent. 51. 140. 
 
106 B.C.] CAEPIO'S JUDICIAEY LAW 481 
 
 had impeached Carbo, known to have been a radical and believed 
 to be a renegade, and he had championed the policy of 
 provincial colonisation as illustrated by the settlement of Narbo 
 Martins.^ His action in the former case might have been equally 
 pleasing to either side ; his action in the latter might have been 
 construed as the work, less of an advanced liberal, than of an 
 imperialist more enlightened than his peers. He had evidently not 
 compromised his chances of political success ; he was still but 
 thirty-four and had just concluded his tenure of the tribunate. In 
 the opposite camp stood Memmius, striving with all his might to 
 keep alive the coalition, which he had done so much to form, be- 
 tween the popular party and the merchant class. The knights 
 mustered readily under his banner, for they had no illusions as to 
 the meaning of the bill ; it was impossible to conciliate an order by 
 the bribery of a few hundreds of its members, whose very names 
 were as yet unknown. To keep the people faithful to the coalition 
 was a much more difficult task. It was soon patent to all that the 
 agitators had not been wrong in supposing that a serious cleft had 
 opened between the late allies, and in the war of words with which 
 the Forum was soon filled, Memmius seems to have been no match 
 for his opponent. Crassus surpassed himself, and the keen but 
 humorous invective with which he held Memmius up to the 
 ridicule of his former followers,^ was balanced by the grand periods 
 in which he formulated his detailed indictment of the methods pur- 
 sued by the existing courts of justice, and of the terrible dangers 
 to the public security produced by their methods of administration. 
 He did not merely impugn the verdicts which were the issue of a 
 jury system so degraded as to have become the sport of a political 
 " faction," but he dwelt on the public danger which sprang from 
 the parasites of the courts, the gloomy brood of public accusers 
 which is hatched by a rotten system, feeds on the impurities of a 
 diseased judicature, and terrifies the commonwealth by the peril 
 that lurks in its poisonous sting. This speech was to be studied by 
 eager students for years to come as a master work in the art of 
 declamatory argument.' But its momentary efllcacy seems to have 
 been as great as its permanent value. Caepio's bill was acclaimed 
 
 ' Pp. 282, 309. 
 
 " Cic. de Or. ii. 59. 240, 66. 264. It is very probable that this attack on 
 Memmius belongs to the speech on the Servilian law. 
 
 ^ Cic. Brut. 44. 164 Mihi (Ciceroni) quidem a pueiitia quasi magistia fuit, 
 inquam, ilia in legem Caepionis oiatio. 
 
 81 
 
A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 106 
 
 and carried.! Then began the turn of the tide. It is practically 
 certain that the authors of the measure never had the courage, 
 or perhaps the time, to carry a single one of its proposals into 
 effect. The senate was not enlarged, nor was the right of judica- 
 ture wrested from the hands of its existing holders.^ The bill may 
 have been repealed within a few months of its acceptance by the 
 people. Caepio went to Gaul to stake his military reputation on a 
 conflict with the German hordes ; he was to return as the best 
 hated man in Rome, to receive no mercy from an indignant people. 
 There was probably more than one cause for this sudden change in 
 political sentiment. The knights may have been thrown off their 
 guard by the suddenness of Caepio's attack upon their privileges, 
 and a few months of organisation and canvassing may have been all 
 that they needed to restore the majority required for effacing the 
 blot upon their name. But the chief reason is doubtless to be 
 sought in the external circumstances of the moment, and can only 
 be fully illustrated by the description which we shall soon be giving 
 of the great events that were taking place on the northern fron- 
 tiers of the empire. It is sufficient for the present to remember 
 that, in the very year in which Caepio's measure had received the 
 ratification of the people, Caius Popillius Laenas, a legate of one of 
 the consuls of the previous year, had been put on his trial before 
 that very people for making a treaty which was considered still 
 more disgraceful than the defeat which had preceded it.' The 
 Comitia now heard the whole story of the conduct of the Roman 
 arms against the barbarians of the North. The story immedi- 
 ately revived the coalition of the early days of the Numidian war, 
 and there was no longer any hope for the success of even moderate 
 counsels proceeding from the senate. Popillius was a second Aulus 
 Albinus, and a new Marius was required to restore the fortunes 
 of the day. It was, however, certain that the only Marius could 
 not be withdrawn from Africa, and men looked eagerly to see what 
 the consular elections for the next year would produce. We hear of 
 no candidate belonging to the highest ranks of the nobility who was 
 deemed to have been defrauded of his birthright on this occasion ; 
 
 ' Cassiod. Chron. ; Obsequens loi (39) (quoted p. 478). 
 
 » Cicero, speaking in 70 B.C., says that the Equites had held the courts for 
 
 nearly fifty years, i.e. up to the date of the lex Cornelia of 81 B.C. (Cic. in Verr. 
 
 Act. i. 13. 38). * 
 
 5 [Cic] ad Herenn. i. 15. 25, iv. 24. 34; de Rep. i. 3. 6 ; pro Balbo 11. 28. 
 
106 B.C.] THE DANGER IN THE NORTH 48S 
 
 but the disappointment of Quintus Lutatius Catulus was deemed 
 wholly legitimate, when Cnaeus Mallius Maximus defeated him at 
 the poll. Catulus belonged to a plebeian family that had been en- 
 nobled by the possession of the consulship at least as early as the 
 First Punic War ; but the distinction had not been perpetuated in 
 the later annals of the house, and if Catulus received the support 
 of the official nobility, it was because his tastes and temperament 
 harmonised with theirs, and because it may have seemed impolitic 
 to advance a man of better birth and more pronounced opinions in 
 view of the prevailing temper of the people. Catulus was a man 
 of elegant taste and polished learning, one of the most perfect 
 Hellenists of the day, and distinguished for the grace and purity of 
 the Latin style that was exhibited in his writings and orations.^ 
 He was one day to write the history of his own momentous consul- 
 ship and of the final struggle with the Cimbri, in which he played 
 a not ignoble part. Much of our knowledge of those days is due to 
 his pen, and the modem historian is perhaps likely to congratulate 
 himself on the blindness of the people, which thrice refused Catulus 
 the consulship and reserved him to be an actor and a witness in the 
 crowning victory of the great year of deliverance. He had already 
 been defeated by Serranus ; he was now subordinated to the claims 
 of Maximus. But what were those claims ? Posterity found it 
 difficult to give an answer,^ and the reason for that difficulty was 
 that this second experiment in the virtues of a " new man " was 
 anything but successful. The family to which Maximus belonged 
 seems to have been wholly undistinguished, and he himself is the 
 only member of his clan who is known to have attained the consul- 
 ship. An explanation of his present prominence could only be 
 gathered from a knowledge of his past career, and of this know- 
 ledge we are wholly deprived ; but it is manifest that he must 
 have done much, either in the way of positive service to the State 
 in subordinate capacities, or in the way of invective against its 
 late administrators, which caused him to be regai-ded as a dis- 
 covery by the leaders of the multitude. The colleague given to 
 
 ' Cic, de Orat. iii. 8. 29; Brut. 35. 132. 
 
 ' Cicero, in speaking of the successive defeats of Catulus at the polls, says 
 Praeposuisse (populum Romanum) Q. Catulo, summa in familia nato, sapien- 
 tissimo et sanctissimo viro, non dico C. Serranum, stultissimum hominem, (fuit 
 enim tamen nobilis,) non C. Fimbiiam, novum hominem, (fuit enim et animi satis 
 magni et consilii,) sed Cn. Mallium, non solum ignobilem, verum sine virtute, sine 
 ingenio, vita etiam contempta ac sordida {pro Plane. $. 12). 
 
484 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 105 
 
 Maximus was a man such as the people in the present emergency 
 could not well refuse. Publius Rutilius Rufus was a kind of Cato 
 with a deeper philosophy, a higher culture, and a far less bewilder- 
 ing activity. As a soldier he had been trained by Scipio in Spain, 
 and he possessed a theoretical interest in military matters which 
 issued in practical results of the most important kind.^ His tenure 
 of the urban praetorship seems to have been marked by reforms 
 which materially improved the condition of the freedmen in 
 matters of private law, and limited the right of patrons to impose 
 burdensome conditions of personal service as the price of manu- 
 mission.^ It was he too who may have introduced the humane 
 system of granting the possession of a debtor's goods to a creditor, 
 if that creditor was willing to waive his claim to the debtor's per- 
 son.' Rutilius, therefore, may have had strong claims on the 
 gratitude of the lower orders ; and his personality was one that 
 could more readily command a gi-ateful respect than a warm affec- 
 tion. He was a learned adherent of the Stoic system, the cold and 
 stem philosophy of which imbued his speeches, already rendered 
 somewhat unattractive by their author's devotion to the forms of 
 the civil law.* He was much in request as an advocate, his learning 
 commanded deep respect, but he lacked or would not condescend 
 to the charm which would have made him a great personal force 
 with the people at a time when there was a sore need of men who 
 were at the same time great and honest. 
 
 By a singular irony of fortune it chanced that the province of 
 Gaul fell to Maximus and not to Rutilius. The strong-headed 
 soldier was left at home to indulge his schemes of army reform 
 while the new man went to his post in the north, to quarrel with 
 the aristocratic Caepio, who was now serving as proconsul in those 
 regions, and to share in the crushing disaster which this dissension 
 drew upon their heads. The search for genius had to be renewed 
 at the close of this melancholy year.' Another " new man " was 
 
 1 Val. Max. ii. 3. 2. The changes introduced into the military ;system by 
 Rutilius will be explained in the next chapter. 
 
 ^ Ulp. in Dig. xxxviii. 2. 1. 1. Mommsen {Staatsr. iii. p. 433) thinks that the 
 consul of 105 is the " praetor Rutilius " of Ulpian's account. 
 
 ' Gaius iv. 35 (Praetor Publius Rutilius), qui et bonorum venditionem introduxisse 
 dicitur. See Bethmann-HoUweg Civilprozess ii. p. 671. Here again the consul of 
 105 is probably meant. 
 
 * Cic. Brut. 30. 113, 114. 
 
 " The disaster at Arausio took place on 6th October (Plut. Luc. 27). The con- 
 suls for the next year may not yet have been elected, as there was at this time no 
 fixed date for the consular Comitia. C/, p. 364 and see Sail. Jug. 114. 
 
105 B.C.] MARIUS ELECTED CONSUL 485 
 
 found in Caius Flavins Fimbria, a product of the forensic activity 
 of the age, a clever lawyer, a bitter and vehement speaker, but with 
 a power that secured his efforts a transitory circulation as types of 
 literary oratory.^ He is not known to have shown any previous 
 ability as a soldier, and his election, so far as it was not due to his 
 own unquestioned merit, may have been but a symbol of the con- 
 tinued prevalence of the distrust of the people in aristocratic in- 
 fluence and qualifications. His competitor was Catulus who was 
 for the third time defeated. For the other place in the consulship 
 there could be no competition. The close of the Numidian war had 
 freed the hands of the man who was still believed to be the greatest 
 soldier of the day. There was, it is true, a legal difficulty in the way 
 of the appointment of Marius to the command in the north. Such a 
 command should belong to a consul, but nearly fifty years before this 
 date a law had been passed absolutely prohibiting re-election to the 
 consulship.* Yet the dispensation granted to the younger Africanus 
 could be quoted as a precedent, and indeed the danger that now 
 threatened the very frontiers of Italy was an infinitely better argu- 
 ment for the suspension of the law than the reverses of the Numan- 
 tine war.' The people were in no mood to listen to legal quibbles. 
 They drove the protestant minority from the assembly, and raised 
 Marius to the position which they deemed necessary for the salvation 
 of the State.* The formal act of dispensation may have been passed 
 by the Comitia either before or after the election, but the senate 
 must have been easily coerced into giving its assent, if its adherence 
 were thought requisite to the validity of the act. The province of 
 
 ' Cic. Brut. 34. i2g; de Oral. ii. 22. 91. 
 
 • Liv. Ep. Ivi. (see the next note). For the probable date of this enactment 
 (151 B.C.) see Momrasen StaaUrecht i. p. 521. 
 
 ' Liv. Ep. Ivi Cum bellum Numantinum vitio ducum non sine pudore publico 
 duiaret, delatus est ultro Scipioni A£ricano a senatu populoque Romano consulatus ; 
 quern cum illi capere ob legem, quae vetabat quemquam itecum consulem fieri, non 
 liceret, sicut priori consulatu, legibus solutus est. 
 
 ^ Plut. Mar. 12 /col rti Seirepov iiraTos ct^ireSeixBTJt rod /iev vifiov KcitXAovros airSvra 
 Kill /i^ SiaKnrSvTa XP^^'^^ apifffi4yov aZBts alpeiaOatt TOv 8e S-fj/Mou robs avrtKeyoyras 
 iKga\6yTos. Plutarch adds that the people recalled the dispensation granted to 
 Scipio when the annihilation of the Carthaginian power was planned. This is 
 perhaps a mistaken reference to the dispensation granted to Scipio in the Numan- 
 tine war. See Liv. Ep. Ivi. (quoted in the last note) ; Cic. pro Leg. Man. 20. 60 and 
 Mommsen Staatsr. I.e. As to the irregularity involved in Marius's absence, it is 
 questionable whether Plutarch is right in supposing that a personal professio v/as 
 required at this time. See Mommsen Staatsr. i. p. 504. Possibly the irregularity 
 consisted in the fact that there had been no formal candidature at all. Other re- 
 ferences to this election of Marius are to be found in Sail jfug. 114 ; Vellei. ii. 12 ; 
 Liv. Ep. Ixvii. 
 
486 A HISTORY OF ROME [B.C. 105 
 
 Gaul was assigned him as a matter of course,^ whether by the senate 
 or the people is a matter of indifference. For the Roman consti- 
 tution was again throwing off the mask of custom and uncovering 
 the bold lineaments which spoke of the undisputed sovereignty of 
 the people. Certainly, if a sovereign has a right to assert himseLf, it 
 is one who is in extremis, who stands between death and revolution. 
 Personality had again triumphed in spite of the meshes of Roman 
 law and custom. It remained to be seen whether the net could be 
 woven again with as much cunning as before, or whether the rent 
 made by Marius was greater than that which had been torn by the 
 Gracchi. 
 
 ' Sail. yug. it4, Marius consul absens factus est, et ei decreta provincia 
 Gallia. 
 
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 Steachan-Davidson, J. L. — Appian, Civil Wars, Book i., edited with notes and 
 
 map. Oxford, 1902. 
 Summers, W. C. — C. Sallusti Crispi jfugurtha, edited with introduction, notes and 
 
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INDEX 
 
 (The references are to the pages ; n, signifies the note on a page.) 
 
 AbACTI, 202 n. 3. 
 
 Abrogation of a magistracy, legality of, 125 foil., 202. 
 
 Achaeus, general of Eunus in the slave revolt in Sicily, 95 ; death of, 98. 
 
 Acilius Glabrio, M., impeached for peculation, 37. 
 
 Adherbal, son of Micipsa, 323 ; joint ruler of Numidia, 327 ; war with Jugurtha, 
 328; sends an embassy to Rome, 328; defeated by Jugurtha, flies to Rome, 
 329 ; appeals in person to the senate, 330 ; recognised by the senate as joint 
 ruler with Jugurtha, 332 ; attacked by Jugurtha, sends an embassy to Rome, 
 334 ; defeated by Jugurtha and besieged in Cirta, 335 ; last appeal to Rome 
 339 ; surrenders Cirta and is put to death by Jugurtha, 343. 
 
 Admissionales, 16 n. 4. 
 
 Aedileship, burdened by the expense of games, 24; edict of the curule aediles 
 against damage done by wild beasts, 26 n. 5 ; an aedile throws Ti. Gracchus's 
 body into the Tiber, 143 ; aedileship of Scaurus, 299. 
 
 Aegean islands, in relation to the Pergamene Empire and the province of Asia, 184, 
 187. 
 
 Aemilia, a vestal, accused of incest, 312, 
 
 Aemilius Paulus, L., establishes the first library in Rome, 22. 
 
 Aemilius Porcina, M., 12 n. 7. 
 
 Aemilius Scaurus, M., author of a law on the freedmen's vote, 296 ; of a sumptuary 
 law, 297 ; victory over the Lignrians, 298, 299 n. 4 ; early career of, 298, 299 ; 
 consulship of, 299, 300; supports Adherbal, 332; commissioner to Numidia, 
 340; legate to Bestia, 348; negotiations with Jugurtha, 330; peace concluded 
 with Jugurtha, 352 ; chosen as one of the presidents of the Mamilian commis- 
 sion, 377 ; censor, 377, 421 ; forced by tribunes to resign, 421 ; bears witness 
 against Fimbria, 477 «. 3. 
 
 Aethiopians, 349 n. 2 ; of the Sahara, 318. 
 
 Africa, North Afi-ica and the production of grain, 71, 205 ; visited by locusts, 205 ; 
 public land of, 291 ; boundaries of the Roman province of Afirica, 316; races 
 of North Africa, 317. 
 
 Ager, Campanus, 112, 293; compascuus, 113, 290 n. 2; Gallicus, 6; viritanus, 6 
 ». I ; Agri vectigales, 80 ». 5 ; cf. Land. 
 
 Agrarian legislation, objections of the government to, 7 ; early agrarian legislation, 
 75; proposal of Ti. Gracchus, iii foil.; commission created by this law, 116; 
 the first commissioners, 127; judicial powers given to the commission, 127; 
 permanence of, after death of Ti. Gracchus, 148; new elections to, 149; diffi- 
 culties of the commission, 150 foil. ; judicial powers taken from, through 
 intervention of Scipio, 158 ; agrarian law of C. Gracchus, 209 ; judgment on 
 the scheme of the Gracchi, 266 foil. ; legislation after the Gracchi, 284 foil. ; 
 law putting an end to the commission, 285. 
 
 Agriculture in Italy, condition of, 58 foil. ; prospects of, 78 foil., 269. 
 
 Agrigentum, rising at, during the slave revolt in Sicily, 95. 
 
 Alae of a Roman house, 14. 
 
 Albinus, see Postumius. 
 
 Albucius, T,, prosecutes Q. Mucius Scaevola, 295. 
 
 (491) 
 
492 INDEX 
 
 Album judicum, 215. 
 
 Alexander Balas, King of Syria, claims of, supported by Rome, 174. 
 
 Alien act of Pennus, 166, 236. 
 
 Allies of Rome, see Italians. 
 
 Ambitu, quaestio de, 307 n. 2. 
 
 Ampsaga, 336, 351 ». 3. 
 
 Annius, L., attempts to secure re-election to the tribunate, 369. 
 
 Annius Luscus, T., controversy with Ti. Gracchus, 131. 
 
 Antigenes of Enna, the master of Eunus, 91, 92 ; put to death, 94. 
 
 Antiochus, the name assumed by Eunus, 94. 
 
 Antipater the Stoic, 104. 
 
 Antonius, M., accused of incest, but acquitted, 313. 
 
 AntuUius, murder of, 249 ; funeral of, 251. 
 
 Apellicon of Teos, library of, 22 n. 2. 
 
 ApoUonis, taken by Aristonicus, 178. 
 
 Apulia, large estates in, 66 ; pasture lands of, 68 ; brigandage of the shepherds of, 88. 
 
 Aquae Regiae, 316. 
 
 Aquae Sextiae, foundation of, 308. 
 
 Aquileia, foundation of, 3 n. 2. 
 
 Aquillius, M'. sent against Aristonicus, 158, 182 ; triumph of, 182 ; accused of 
 
 poisoning streams, 182; directs the organisation of the province of Asia, 183; 
 
 accused of selling Phrygia, 183 ; acquitted of extortion, 212. 
 Aratores of Sicily, 71. 
 Arausio, date of the disaster at, 484 «. 5. 
 Archias of Antioch, his reception in Italy, 21 n. 2. 
 Argentarii, 5r. 
 
 Ariarathes IV., King of Cappadocia, 173. 
 Ariarathes V., restored to kingdom of Cappadocia, 174. 
 Aristonicus, revolt of, 177 foil. ; capture and execution of, 182. 
 Army, growth of professional spirit in, 5 ; Ti. Gracchus suggests modifications of 
 
 service in, 135 ; length of service in, 135 n. i ; C. Gracchus improves conditions 
 
 of service in, 208 ; corruption in, during Numidian War, 383, 385 ; Marius's 
 
 reform in, 61 n. 2, 424. 
 Arpinum, admitted to the franchise, 168 n, 2, 170 ; birthplace of Marius, 301. 
 Art, collection of works of, ig foil. 
 Artisans, condition of, at Rome, 55, 203. 
 Asculum, possible rising at, 170 n. 1. 
 Asia, province of, 183 foil. ; taxation of, 218 foil. 
 Asinius PoUio, C, founder of first public library at Rome, 22 «. 2, 
 Aspar, agent of Jugurtha at the court of Bocchus, 461, 464. 
 Assidui, 150. 
 
 Assignation of land, cessation of the system of, 6 ; Viritane, 6 ; cf. Agrarian. 
 Athens, outbreak of slaves in the mines of, 8g. 
 Atilius Regulus, C, consul 257 B.C., 476 n. 3. 
 Atilius Serranus, C, consul 106 B.C., 476. 
 Atriarii, 16 n. 4. 
 Atriensis, 14 n. i, 16 n. 4. 
 Atrium, 13. 
 
 Attalus II., Regent of Pergamon, his relations to Rome, 173 foil. 
 Attalus III., King of Pergamon, son of Eumenes II., ward of Attalus II., 173; 
 
 becomes king, character of his rule, 175 ; bequeaths his kingdom to the Roman 
 
 people, 129, 175. 
 Aurelius Cotta, L., acquitted of extortion, zii, 
 Aurelius Cotta, L., consul 119 B.C., opposes the ballot law of Marius, 304 ; conflict 
 
 with Marius in the senate, 305. 
 Aurelius Orestes, L., conducts a war in Sardinia, 188 ; his command prolonged, 196 j 
 
 Scaurus serves under him, 299. 
 Aurum coronarium, 32 n. 6, 
 Auxilium, tribunician, 236. 
 Auximum, foundation of, 3 n. 2. 
 Aventine, occupied by C. Gracchus and Flaccus, 253. 
 
INDEX 498 
 
 Baebius C, supports the senate against Meramius, 360 ; hinders the revelations of 
 Jugurtha, 361, 362. 
 
 Baga, King of Mauretania, 349 n. 2. 
 
 Bagradas, 316, 388, 390. 
 
 Bailiffs of estates, 12; cf. Villicus. 
 
 Baleaies, character and habits of the, 188, 189. 
 
 Balearic Islands, annexation of the, 188 foil. 
 
 Ballot Acts, 31 ; law of Carbo, 149, 163 ; effect of the ballot, 163 ; law of Marius, 304. 
 
 Banking, 51. 
 
 Barrus, 312. 
 
 Basilicae, 53. 
 
 Beasts, hunting of wild, as an amusement at Rome, 26. 
 
 Bedja, 316, 351 ». 3. 
 
 Berbers, 317. 
 
 Bestia, see Calpurnius. 
 
 Blossius of Cumae, teacher of the Gracchi, 104 ; urges Ti. Gracchus to his last enter- 
 prise, 138; his devotion to Ti. Gracchus and death in Asia, 147. 
 
 Bocchori, 188 n. 7. 
 
 Bocchus, King of Mauretania and father-in-law of Jugurtha, 349, 430 ; overtures to 
 Rome rejected, 349, 430 ; Roman deserters take refuge with, 409 ; alliance with 
 Jugurtha, 431 ; negotiations with Metellus, 433 ; fruitless negotiations with 
 Marius, 435; retires to Mauretania, 436; renewed junction with Jugurtha, 
 agreement about cession of part of Numidia, 446 ; attacks Marius during the 
 retirement &om the Muluccha, 447 foil. ; renews negotiations with Marius, 
 454 ; interview with Sulla and Manlius, 455 ; sends envoys to the Roman 
 camp, 456; to Rome, 458; provisional recognition as an ally by the senate, 
 458 ; asks to meet Sulla, 458 ; ambiguous attitude towards Sulla and Jugurtha, 
 461 foil. ; surrenders Jugurtha to Sulla, 465 ; obtains the extension of Maure- 
 tania, 466 ; sends a dedicatory offering to the Roman Capitol, 476. 
 
 Bomilcar, minister of Jugurtha, effects the murder of Massiva, 364 ; prosecuted for 
 murder, 364 ; released on bail and sent from Rome by Jugurtha, 365 ; com- 
 mands a part of Jugurtha's forces at the Muthul, 391, 393, 394, 397, 398; 
 negotiations with Metellus, 407 ; urges Jugurtha to make terras with Rome, 
 408 ; intrigues against Jugurtha, 418 ; put to death, 419, 
 
 Bribery, laws against, 30; equestrian jurors not liable to prosecution for, 216; C. 
 Gracchus's law against bribery in jurisdiction, 216; suspicion of, during the 
 Numidian war, see Corruption. 
 
 Brigandage, as a result of slavery, 86 ; of slaves in Sicily, gi. 
 
 Bruttii, treatment by Rome of, 48 ; large estates in, 66. 
 
 Bulla Regia, 351 «. 3. 
 
 Buxentum, desertion of the colony at, 5. 
 
 Caecilius Metellus Baleaiicus, Q., conquers the Baleares and founds Palma and 
 PoUentia, i8g. 
 
 Caecilius Metellus Oalmaticus, L., assists Marius, 303 ; conflict with Marius in the 
 senate, 305 ; victory over the Dalmatians, 298 ; censor, 297 ; pontifex maximus, 
 tries the vestals, 312. 
 
 Caecilius Metellus Macedonicus, Q., attacks Ti. Gracchus, 130 ; defends Cotta, 211 ; 
 laments the death of Scipio, 162 ; the success of his family, 298. 
 
 Caecilius Metellus Numidicus, Q., elected consul, 369 ». 3, 380 ; entrusted with the 
 command in Numidia, 380 ; character of, 381 ; chooses Marius and Rutilius as 
 his legates, 382; reorganises the army in Africa, 384; tampers with the envoys 
 of Jugurtha, 386, 388 ; first campaign, 387 foil. ; occupies Vaga, 388 ; conflict 
 with Jugurtha on the Muthul, 391 foil. ; sends news of his victory to the senate, 
 399; second campaign, 401 foil.; siege of Zama, 403 foil.; raises the siege, 
 406 ; negotiations with Bomilcar, 407 ; summons a council to discuss terms 
 with Jugurtha, 408 ; executes deserters from the Roman army, 409 ; dissuades 
 Marius from seeking the consulship, 411 ; recovery and punishment of Vaga, 
 415, 416 ; expedition to, Thala, 427 ; capture of the town, 428 ; at Cirta, 432 ; 
 superseded by Marius, 432 ; temporises with Bocchus, 433 ; triumph on his 
 return to Rome, 435. 
 
494 INDEX 
 
 Caepio, see Servilius. 
 
 Caesar, see Julius. 
 
 Caesariensis, 466 n 4. 
 
 Calabria, pasture lands of, 68. 
 
 Calama, 370. 
 
 Calpurnius Bestia, L., proposes the recall of Popilhus firom exile, 297, 347 ; entrusted 
 
 with the command in Numidia, 346 ; character of, 347 ; campaign of, 348 foil. ; 
 
 negotiations with Jugurtha, 350; peace arranged with Jugurtha, 351, 352; 
 
 returns to Rome, 352 ; condemned by the Mamilian commission, 378. 
 Calpurnius Piso, L., author of a law on extortion, 135 ; sent against the Sicilian 
 
 slaves, besieges Enna, 97 ; criticises by his action the corn-law of C. Gracchus, 
 
 207. 
 Capite censi, 150. 
 
 Capsa, 426 ; description of, 437 ; Marius's expedition to, 438 ; capture and destruc- 
 tion of, 439. 
 Capua, territory of, 45, 293 ; exempted from legislation of the Gracchi, 112, 225 ; 
 
 colony projected by C. Gracchus at, 225. 
 Carbo, see Papirius. 
 
 Caria, treatment of, in the organisation of the province of Asia, 184. 
 Carthage, latifundia in, 64 ; revival of, after Second Punic War, 69 ; agriculture at, 
 
 71 ; possible ground of Cato's hostility to, 72 ; slaves exported after capture of, 
 
 81, 82 ». 2, 8g ; Baleares in the service of, 188 ; proposal for the colonisation 
 
 of, 227 ; permanence of the settlement near, 283 ; Leptis, stipendiary to, 429 ». i. 
 Cassius, Sp., agrarian law of, 6. 
 
 Cassius Dionysius's translation of Mago's work on agriculture, 65 «. 2. 
 Cassius Longinus, L., censor, 12 ». 7 ; C. Gracchus's appearance before, ig6 ; 
 
 president of the court for the trial of the vestals, 313. 
 Cassius Longinus, L., praetor, sent to bring Jugurtha to Rome, 357 foil. ; consul, 
 
 422. 
 Catana seized by the revolting slaves in Sicily, 96. 
 Cato, see Porcius. 
 Catulus, see Lutatius. 
 Caudine Forks, treaty of the, 374. 
 Celibacy, increase of, in Roman society, 62. 
 Censors, activity of, 27, 297 ; contracts made with, 220 ; limit the freedmen's vote, 
 
 296. 
 Census lists, decline in, 60 ; increase in, after agrarian law of Ti. Gracchus, 150 ; 
 
 no increase after agrarian law of C. Gracchus, 209 ; census for military service, 
 
 61 «. 2, 424. 
 Cereatae, the birthplace of Marius, 301. 
 Cerialia, 24. 
 Cilicia, treatment of, in the organisation of the province of Asia, 184; subsequently 
 
 becomes a province, 187. 
 Cilician slaves, 82 «. 2, 88, 89, 95 ; pirates, 97. 
 Cimbri defeat Silanus, 421. 
 Cinyps, 429 ». i. 
 Cirta, 321, 322, 430; description of, 335, 336; besieged by Jugurtha, 336 foil.; 
 
 surrender of, 343; massacre at, 344; Romans regain possession of, 348, 431; 
 
 becomes the centre of the Numidian War, 431 ; Metellus at, 432 ; battle between 
 
 Marius and the allied kings near, 452 ; headquarters of Marius, 456 ». 4, 457. 
 Claudius Marcellus, M., removes works of art from Syracuse, 20. 
 Claudius Pulcher, Ap., father-in-law of Ti. Gracchus, 107 ; supports the scheme of 
 
 Ti. Gracchus, no; elected agrarian commissioner, 127; death of, 149. 
 Cleon, leader of the slaves at Agrigentum, 95 ; junction with Eunus, 96 ; death of, 
 
 98. 
 Clientship, its influence at elections, 31, 204. 
 Coenaculum, 12 n. 5, 14. 
 Coloni, 80. 
 Colonies, maritime, 4 ; Latin 4 ; projected by C. Gracchus, 224 foil., 2S9 ; attributed 
 
 to a lex Sempronia, 224 «. 2 ; proposed by Livius Drusus, 240, 288. 
 Colonisation, decline of, in Italy, 4 foil.; revival by C. Gracchus, 224 foil., 270; 
 
INDEX 495 
 
 transmarine, projected by C. Gracchus, 225 ; sentiment against it, 226 ; scheme 
 of Livius Drusus, 241, 270, 283. 
 
 Colonists, foreign, settled on Italian soil, 6x. 
 
 Colophon taken by Aristonicus, 178. 
 
 Coma, brother of Cleon, his heroic death, g8. 
 
 Comitia, probable influence of state-contractors in, 43 ; Latin vote in, 166 ; of Tribes, 
 perhaps made competent to try a magistrate for violation of the Provocatio, 
 201 ; Centuriata, method of voting in ; change proposed by C. Gracchus, 237. 
 
 Commerce, see Trade. 
 
 Commissions, special judicial, 135, 200, 373; for the trial of the vestals, 312; 
 Mamihan, 358 ». i, 375 foil. ; commissions sent to Asia, 179, 183 ; to Numidia, 
 332, 336, 340. For agrarian commission, see Agrarian. 
 
 Concubinage, 63. 
 
 Concubinatus, 63 n. 2. 
 
 Condus promus, 17 ». 3. 
 
 Conscription, one of the causes of the ruin of the peasant proprietors, 76 ; proposal 
 of Ti. Gracchus with reference to, 135 ; proposal of C. Gracchus, 208 ; change 
 introduced by Marius, 61 n. 2, 424. 
 
 Consulship, law prohibiting re-election to, 485. 
 
 Cooks, value attached to, 17. 
 
 Corinth, public land at, 45, 291. 
 
 Corn, importation of, one of the causes of the decline of peasant-proprietors in 
 Italy, 70 ; areas from which corn was imported, 71 ; supply to the Roman 
 market, 72 ; sold at a reduced price to poorer citizens, 205, 284, 287 ; distribu- 
 tion modified by a lex Octavia, 284 n. 2 ; proposal for distribution during the 
 tribunate of Marius, 284 ». 2, 306. 
 
 Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, 103 ; influence on her sons, 104, 1 10 ; suspected 
 of complicity in the death of Scipio, 161 ; intercedes with C. Gracchus for 
 Octavius, 203 ; counsels prudence to C. Gracchus, 248 ; sends him assistance, 
 249 ; closing years of, 260. 
 
 Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus, P., his moderation in the use of silver-plate, ig ; pro- 
 tests against Greek dancing, 22 ; hesitates to attempt reform, 102 ; married to 
 Sempronia, 103 ; apportions Numidia between the sons of Masinissa, 322 ; 
 dispensed from the law prohibiting re-election to the consulship, 485 n. 4 ; at 
 Numantia, predicts the success of Marius, 302 ; befriends Jugurtha, 324 ; 
 warns Jugurtha, 325 ; congratulates Micipsa, 325 ; triumph after Numantine 
 War, 155 ; attitude to the Numantine treaty, 108 ; prosecutes Cotta, 211 ; fails 
 to secure the command against Aristonicus, 180 ; attitude to the fall of Ti. 
 Gracchus, 154, 156; protects the Italians against the agrarian commission, 
 I54> 157; opposes Carbo's bill for re-election to the tribunate, 155, 164; con- 
 flict with the masses at Rome, 156 ; his interest in the Italians, 157 ; intervenes 
 to have judicial powers taken firom the agrarian commission, 158 ; growing 
 unpopularity at Rome, 158 ; death of, 159 foil. ; achievements and character of, 
 161 foil. 
 
 Cornelius Scipio Africanus, P. (the elder), tears up the account-books of his brother, 
 37 ; visited by bandits, 86. 
 
 Cornelius Scipio Asiaticus, L., games given by, 23 n. 2. 
 
 Cornelius Scipio Nasica, P., opponent of Ti. Gracchus, 128; urges extreme pro- 
 ceedings against him, 141 ; leads the senators against him, 142 ; assessor on 
 the commission for trying his adherents, 146 ; popular feeling against, 147 ; 
 sent to Asia, 148, 179; elected pontifex maxiraus in absence; dies near Per- 
 gamon, 148. 
 
 Cornelius Scipio Nasica, P., consul, 346 ; death of, 353. 
 
 Cornelius Sulla. L., quaestor, joins Marius with a force of cavalry, 444 ; early life, 
 444, 445, 12 «. 4 ; efficiency as an officer, 446 ; commands the cavalry in the 
 retirement from the Muluccha, 448-452; sent by Marius to Bocchus, 454; 
 appeal to Bocchus, 455 ; protects the envoys of Bocchus, 457 ; supports his 
 request for an armistice, 458 ; final mission to Bocchus, 459 foil. ; receives 
 Jugurtha, 465 ; serves under Marius in the Germanic campaigns, 475 ; claims 
 the merit of concluding the Numidian War, 475, 476; brings back library of 
 Apellicon of Teos, 22 n. 2 ; forced to be aedile before he became praetor, 24 n, 2. 
 
496 INDEX 
 
 Coronae triumphales, 32 n. 6. 
 
 Corruption, in diploniatic relations, 40 ; suspicion of, during the Numidian War, 331, 
 340, 345, 347, 350, 360, 369, 472 ; in the army during the Numidian War, 358, 
 
 383- 
 Cotta, see Aurelius. 
 Crassus, see Licinius. 
 
 Cretan archers employed against C. Gracchus and Flaccus, 255. 
 Curius, M'., assigns land in the Sabine territory, 6 ». 2. 
 Cyme, defeat of Aristonicus's fleet off, 177. 
 
 Dabar, advocate of Rome at the court of Bocchus, 461, 462. 
 
 Damophilus of Enna, his treatment of his slaves, 86, 92 ; his wealth and luxury, 92 ; 
 tried and executed by the revolting slaves, 94 ; death of his wife, 94 ; preserva- 
 tion of his daughter, 94, 
 
 Decius, P., prosecutes Opimius, 278 ; punished by Scaurus, 300. 
 
 Decumani, 220. 
 
 Dediticii in Bruttii, 68. 
 
 Delos, slave-mart at, 82 ; outbreak of slaves at, 89. 
 
 Dertona, 421. 
 
 Deserters from the Roman army, punishment by Metellus of, 409. 
 
 Dictatorship, disappearance of, as a means of preserving order, 140. 
 
 Diodotus, surnamed Tryphon, King of Syria, 95. 
 
 Dionysius, see Cassius. 
 
 Diophanes of Mitylene, teacher of the Gracchi, 104 ; put to death as a supporter of 
 Ti. Gracchus, 147. 
 
 Djebel Beni-Younfes, 439 » I. 
 
 Djebel Hemeur mta Ouargha, 390 n. I. 
 
 Djebel Sara, 390 ». 1. 
 
 Djiama, 402 n. 2. 
 
 Domitius Cn., victorious over the AUobroges, 298, 308 ; censor, 297. 
 
 Dress, new fashions of, 18, 56, 
 
 Drusus, see Livius. 
 
 Economic conditions in Italy before the Gracchi, 11 foil. 
 
 £1-Gharra, 316. 
 
 El Kef, 402 n. 2. 
 
 El-Lehs, 402 n. 2. 
 
 Elles, 402 ». 2. 
 
 Emigration as a remedy for poverty, 204 ; cf. Colonisation. 
 
 Enna, the centre of the slave revolt in Sicily, 92 ; massacre at, 93 ; besieged by 
 Piso, 97 ; captured, 98. 
 
 Ephesians defeat Aristonicus, 177 ; antedate the era of the province of Asia, 183. 
 
 Epirus, prisoners from, sold as slaves, 81. 
 
 Equites, as a general class designation, 41; their views on imperial expansion, 46; 
 as judices under the scheme of Ti. Gracchus, 135 ; as judices under the law of 
 C. Gracchus, 212; as judices in civil cases, 216; character of their jurisdiction, 
 216, 295 ; not liable to prosecution for bribery, 216 ; as collectors of the taxes 
 of Asia, 220 ; not liable for extortion, 220 ; championed by Glaucia, 310; prob- 
 ably on the court for the trial of the vestals, 312 ; resent the massacre at Cirta, 
 344, 471 ; attitude towards the peace with Jugurtha, 354 ; judges on the 
 Mamilian commission, 378 ; severity of their judgment, 378, 379 ; in Africa, 
 their view of Metellus's conduct of the war, 410, 412 ; support the candidature 
 of Marius, 413 ; attacked by the judiciary law of Caepio, 477 ; attitude to the 
 law, 478, 481. Equites equo publico, escort of generals or princes, 412 n. 3. 
 
 Ergastulum, as employed by the manufacturer, 46 ; by the planter, 83, cf. 92 ; 
 ergastula broken open by the slaves of Sicily, 95. 
 
 Es-sers, 402 n. 2. 
 
 Etruria, plantation system in, 66, 109 ; slave rising in, 88. 
 
 Eudemus, the Pergamene envoy, approaches Ti. Gracchus, 129. 
 
 Eumenes II., King of Pergamon, his relations to Rome, 172. 
 
 Eunus, leader of the slave revolt in Sicily, his prophetic powers, 91 ; leads the 
 
INDEX 497 
 
 attack on Enna, 93 ; puts to death his masters, 94 ; preserves the lives of his 
 benefactors, 94; elected king, 94; his wife becomes queen, 95; recognises 
 Achaeus as his general, 95 ; junction with Cleon, 96 ; capture and death, 98. 
 
 Expansion, Roman and Greek, compared, 3. 
 
 Extortion, formation of a court for, 39, cf. lex Acilia, Calpurnia, Junia ; class spirit 
 in trials for, 211 ; suspicious acquittals in trials for, 211 ; equites not liable for, 
 220. 
 
 Fabius Maximus, Q., delivers the funeral oration on Scipio, 160 ; victorious over 
 the AUobroges, 298, 308. 
 
 Fabrateria, foundation of, 171. 
 
 Falerii, revolt of, 169; war vsrith, in vindication of the tribunate, 199. 
 
 Fannius, C, elected consul through the influence of C. Gracchus, 230 ; opposes 
 the franchise bill of C. Gracchus, 235 ; issues an edict excluding Italians from 
 Rome, 236. 
 
 Farmers of the taxes, see Publicani. 
 
 Feid-es-Smar, 390 n. i. 
 
 Feneratores, 50. 
 
 Fimbria, see Flavins. 
 
 Fire in Rome, 314. 
 
 Flaccus, see Fulvius and Valerius. 
 
 Flamininus, see Quinctius. 
 
 Flaminius, C, author of an agrarian law, 6. 
 
 Flavins Fimbria, C, acquitted of extortion, 477 n. 3 ; consul, 485. 
 
 Floralia, 24. 
 
 Formiae admitted to the franchise, 168 ». 2, 170. 
 
 Forum, business life of, 52. 
 
 Franchise, see Italians and Latins. 
 
 Freedmen, as competitors of the Roman artisans, 55-57, 203 ; descendants of, 
 dependent on the noble houses, 204 ; law of Scaurus dealing with the voting 
 power of, 296. 
 
 Fregellae, revolt and destruction of, 170, 171 ; prosecution of the supposed authors 
 of the revolt, 171, 200. 
 
 Frumentum emptum, 72. 
 
 Fulvius (perhaps Flaccus, Ser.) appeals to Ti. Gracchus, 122. 
 
 Fulvius {son of M. Fulvius Flaccus) sent as envoy to the senate, 254 ; death of, 255. 
 
 Fulvius Flaccus, C, sent against the slaves in Sicily, 97. 
 
 Fulvius Flaccus, M., brings news to Ti. Gracchus of the intentions of the senate, 
 139; chosen agrarian commissioner, 149; inveighs against Scipio, 159; sus- 
 pected of complicity in his death, 161 ; proposes to extend the franchise, 167 
 foil. ; conflict with the senate, i6g ; goes to Transalpine Gaul, 169 ; campaign 
 amongst the Gauls and Ligurians, 188 ; triumvir for establishing the colony at 
 Carthage, 228 ; becomes tribune, 230 ; behaviour in Rome during the absence 
 of C. Gracchus, 244 ; seizes the Aventine, 253 ; death of, 255. 
 
 Fulvius Nobilior, M., raids the art-treasures of the Ambraciots, 20 ». 2 ; exhibits 
 wild-beasts at Rome, 27 ; golden wreath presented to, 32. 
 
 Fundi, admitted to the franchise, 168 ». 2, 170. 
 
 Fundus suburbanus, 80 n. 4. 
 
 Gaetulians, 317, 318, 349 ». 2; characteristics of, 430 ; Jugurtha seeks assistance 
 
 from, 429 ; in the service of Jugurtha, 435, 436, 447, 449 ; brigands rob the 
 
 envoys of Bocchus, 457. 
 Gafsa, 437 n. i. 
 Galba, see Sulpicius. 
 
 Games, growth and expense of public, 23 foil. ; cf. Ludi. 
 Gauda, 323 ; left heir in remainder to the throne of Numidia 323 «. i, 412 ; conflict 
 
 with Metellus, 412 ; urged by Marius to seek the crown, 413 ; becomes Kmg of 
 
 Numidia, 466. 
 Gaul Cisalpine, fertility of, 72 ; probable existence of ager pubUcus in, 76, 153 ; 
 
 disappearance of most of the native population from, 76 ». 2 ; slaves from, 81 ; 
 
 province of, perhaps destined for Marius, 422. 
 
498 INDEX 
 
 Genua, 421. 
 
 Gilds of artificers at Rome, 55. 
 
 Glabrio, see Acilius. 
 
 Gladiatorial shows, growth and prevalence of, 23. 
 
 Gracchi, intimate connection of their reforms, 144, 261 ; judgments of posterity on 
 
 the, 259 ; judgment on the legislation of, 260 foil. 
 Gracchus, see Sempronius. 
 
 Granaries, created by the corn-law of C. Gracchus, 207. 
 Gratidius, M., accuses Fimbria of extortion, 477 n. 3. 
 Great Plains, region of the, 316, 390. 
 
 Greece, economic evils and decline of population in, 71, 106. 
 Guiuntum, 188 ». 7. 
 Gulussa, joint ruler of Numidia, 322 ; father of Massiva, 323 n. 1, 362. 
 
 Hamilcar of Leptis, 429. 
 
 Harbour dues, see Portoria. 
 
 Heliopolis, the ideal city of the followers of Aristonicus, 178, 
 
 Hellenic ideal of the citizen, 205 ; view that the state is swayed by the judicature, 
 
 210. 
 Hellenism, earlier influences of, 2; later influences of, ii; intellectual elements in, 
 
 20 ; of the Asiatic slaves, 89 ; of the Gracchi, 104. 
 Helvia, story of the death of, 311. 
 Henschir ain Neschma, 370 ». x. 
 Henschir Tina, 316. 
 
 Herennii, clientship of the family of Marius to the, 303. 
 Hermeias, slays Damophilus at Enna, 94 ; perhaps preserves the life Of Damophilns's 
 
 daughter, 94. 
 Hiempsal I., son of Micipsa, 323 ; joint ruler of Numidia, quarrels with Jugurtha, 
 
 327 ; murder of, 328. 
 Hiempsal II., King of Numidia, 466. 
 Hippo Regius, 370, 390 ». 1. 
 Histri, attacked by the consul Tuditanus, 187. 
 Hostilius Mancinus, C, commands in Spain, 108 ; surrendered to the Numantines, 
 
 log. 
 House, changes in the Roman, 13 foil. 
 Hypsaeus, L., praetor, routed by the slaves in Sicily, 96. 
 
 Iamo, 188 n. 7. 
 
 lapudes, attacked by the consul Tuditanus, 187. 
 
 Illyrian campaign of Scaurus, 299. 
 
 Imagines of ancestors, 15. 
 
 Imperialism, as understood by the business classes, 46, 54, 
 
 Incolae, limited suffrage of Latin, 233 ». 2. 
 
 Ingenuitas, a qualification for service in the legions, 425 ». 1. 
 
 Insula, 12 «. 6. 
 
 Interregna of log B.C., 373. 
 
 Italians, their interest in the public land, 7, 152, 165 ; induced to accept sumptuary 
 legislation, 29 ; suffer from the rapacity of Roman commanders, 38 ; military 
 and pecuniary burdens on, 77 ; sufferings of South Italians, vitality of agricul- 
 ture in the Eastern districts, 78 ; Italian interests appealed to by Ti. Gracchus, 
 no ». 5 ; Italians perhaps benefited by his agrarian scheme, 115 ; Ti. Gracchus 
 said to have proposed citizenship for, 136 ; supposed promises of Scipio to, 
 161 ; co-operation between Italians and Roman reformers, 165 ; agreement for 
 the extension of the franchise, 166 ; proposal of Fulvius Flaccus to extend the 
 franchise, 167; proposal of C. Gracchus to increase the rights of, 233 ; excluded 
 from Rome, 166, 236 ; invited by C. Gracchus to share in the colony of Junonia, 
 243 ; increased military burdens of, 265 ; guaranteed in their holdings by a law 
 of Drusus, 288 ; treatment of, in agrarian law of in B.C., 294 ; merchants defend 
 Cirta, 335 ; urge Adherbal to surrender Cirta, 343 ; massacre at Cirta, 344 ; 
 cohorts for Numidia, 373, 382; their support sought against the lex Mamilia, 
 376; cavalry serving in Numidia, 443,444. 
 
INDEX 499 
 
 JuBA II., King of Numidia, 466 n. i. 
 
 Judices, appeal from and change in qualification of, suggested by Ti. . Gracchus, 
 135 ; change in qualification of, introduced by C. Gracchus, 212 foil. ; of the 
 quaestiones perpetuae, 200, 
 
 Judicia publica, 135. 
 
 Jugurtha, son of Mastanabal, 322 ; early life of, 323 ; at Numantia, 324 foil. ; joint ruler 
 of Numidia, 326 ; war with Adherbal, 32S ; defeats Adherbal and becomes master 
 of Numidia, 329 ; sends an embassy to Rome, 329 ; representations of his envoys, 
 330; recognised by the senate as joint ruler with Adherbal, 332, 333 ; renews 
 hostilities with Adherbal, 334 ; besieges Adherbal in Cirta, 335 foil. ; reply to 
 the protest of the senate, 337 ; meets the senatorial commission in Africa, 342 ; 
 puts Adherbal to death, 343 ; war declared by Rome, 346 ; his embassy to 
 Rome rejected, 347 ; negotiates with Bestia and Scaurus, 350 ; peace arranged 
 with Bestia, 351, 352; comes to Rome, 360; appearance before the people, 
 361 ; effects the murder of Massiva, 364 ; rescues Bomilcar and quits Rome, 
 365 ; campaign against Sp. Albinus, 367 ; attacks A. Albinus, 37r ; forces 
 degrading terms on Albinus, 372; attempts diplomacy with Metellus, 385, 
 388; plan to entrap Metellus, 389; conflict with Metellus on the Muthul, 391 
 foil. ; comes to the aid of Zama, 403 ; conflict with Marius at Sicca, 403 ; 
 attempts to relieve Zama, 404 foil. ; urged by Bomilcar to make terms with 
 Rome, 408 ; after concessions, breaks off negotiations with Metellus, 409, 410 ; 
 discovers the plot of Bomilcar, 419 ; retires to Thala, 426 ; seeks assistance 
 from the Gaetulians, 429 ; alliance with Bocchus, 431 ; opposed to Marius, 
 436; renewed junction with Bocchus, agreement about cession of part of 
 Numidia, 446 ; attacks Marius during the retirement from the Muluccha, 447 
 foil. ; allows Sulla to pass through his camp, 461 ; attempts to combat Sulla's 
 influence at the Mauretanian court, 461 foil. ; betrayed by Bocchus and handed 
 over to Sulla, 465 ; execution of, 468. 
 
 Julia, wife of Marius, 307. 
 
 Julius Caesar, C, regulation about herdsmen, 266. 
 
 Junius Pennus, M., alien act of, 166, 236. 
 
 Junius Silanus, M., consul, 369 «. 3, 380; sent to Gaul, 380; defeated by the 
 Cimbri, 421. 
 
 Junonia, proposed colony of, 227, 270 ; attempted foundation of, 243 foil. 
 
 Jus Italicum, 227 n. 4, 284 ». i. 
 
 Justitium, declared by Ti. Gracchus, 122 ; perhaps declared by tribunes of no B.C., 
 369. 
 
 Kabes, Gulf of, 437 n. i. 
 
 Kabyle, compared with the Numidian, 319, 320, 
 
 Kafsa, 437 n. t; 439 ». i. 
 
 Kairouan, 316. 
 
 Knights, see Equites, 
 
 Koudiat Abd Allah, 390 n. i. 
 
 Laelius, C, contemplates agrarian reform, 102 ; assessor on the commission for 
 trying adherents of Ti. Gracchus, 146 ; writes the funeral oration on Scipio, 
 160 ; passages from the oration, 160, 162 ; opposes Carbo's law on re-election 
 to the tribunate, 164, 
 
 Laenas, see Popillius. 
 
 Laetorius, heroic defence of C. Gracchus, 256, 
 
 Land, public, revenue from, 17 ; possession of, 73 ; land as the staple of the wealth 
 of the official class, 36 ; change in tenure of land, 65 ; causes of the change, 
 69 foil. ; land in Italy possessed by Rome, 8 ; devastation of Italian land in 
 Second Punic War, 69 ; cf. Ager and Agrarian. 
 
 Lares, 438. 
 
 Latifundia, growth of, 64, 76 ; cf. Plantation. 
 
 Latins, probably invited to settle on public land, 74, 153 ; exhausted by the Second 
 Punic War, 77 ; interest in the public land, 113, 152, 153 ; probably benefited 
 by the agrarian scheme of Ti. Gracchus, 115 ; supposed promises of Scipio to, 
 161 ; limited suffrage in the Comitia, i65 ; citizenship for, proposed by C. 
 
500 INDEX 
 
 Gracchus, 233 j Latin rights to Italians proposed by C. Gracchus, 233 ; Latin 
 
 rights of Transpadanes, 233 n. 3; law proposed by Livius Drusus for the 
 
 protection of, 242 ; increased military burdens of, 265 ; confirmed in their 
 
 landed possessions by a law of Drusus, 288 ; treatment of, in the agrarian law 
 
 of III B.C., 290, 294 ; citizenship granted to, as a reward for successful prosecu- 
 tion in extortion, 310 ». 5 ; cohorts for Numidia, 373, 382, 423 ; their support 
 
 sought against the lex Mamilia, 376 ; cavalry serving in Numidia, 444. 
 Leaseholds, growth of, 80. 
 Lehs, 402 n. 2. 
 
 Lentulus, P., joins in the attack on C. Gracchus and Flaccus, 255 ; retires to Sicily, 280. 
 Leptis, the Greater, seeks help from Rome, 429 ; doubtful whether incorporated into 
 
 the Empire, 466 ». 4. 
 Leucae, occupied by Aristonicus, 177, 181. 
 Lex and Leges : 
 
 Acilia repetundarum, 214 «. 2, 215 n. 2, 302 ». 3. 
 
 Aebutia (forbidding author of a law to be its executant), 229 ». 4, 
 
 Aemilia (on the freedmen's vote), 296. 
 
 Agraria (in B.C.), 113 ». 2, 115 «. 2, 288 foil. 
 
 Antonia de Termessibus, 39 n. 2. 
 
 Calpurnia repetundarum, 39, 135, 211. 
 
 Clodia (prohibiting trade to senators), 33, 73. 
 
 Cornelia Baebia, 31 n. i. 
 
 Cornelia judiciaria, 482 n. 2. 
 
 Didia, 29. 
 
 Fannia, 28. 
 
 Flavia agraria, 113 n, 2. 
 
 Graccana, 224 n. 2. 
 
 Junia de peregrinis, 166. 
 
 Junia repetundarum, 135, 211. 
 
 Licinia agraria, 75 n. 2. 
 
 Licinia sumptuaria, 29 n. 4. 
 
 Licinia (forbidding author of a law to be its executant), 229 «. 4. 
 
 Liviae, for the foundation of colonies, 240 ; abolishing the vectigal on allotments, 
 241, 266 ; for the protection of the Latins, 242. 
 
 Mamilia (establishing commission for adherents of Jugurtha), 358 ». i ; 275 foil. 
 
 Maria tabellaria, 304. 
 
 Memmia, 313 ». 3. 
 
 Octavia (on the distribution of corn), 284 ». 2. 
 
 Oppia, 28. 
 
 Orchia, 28. 
 
 Papiria Tabellaria, 163. 
 
 Peducaea (for the trial of vestals), 313. 
 
 Poetelia abolishing Nexum, 73 n. 2. 
 
 Poetelia de ambitu, 30 «. 3. 
 
 Porcia repetundarum, 39 n. 2. 
 
 Rubria (for the foundation of Junonia), 227, 248, 283. 
 
 Rupilia (Siciliae), 99 n. 3. 
 
 Semproniae (of C. Gracchus), protecting the caput of a Roman citizen, 199 ; 
 that magistrates deposed by the people be debarred further office, 202; 
 enjoining the sale of corn at a reduced price, 205, 284; improving the 
 condition of soldiers, 208; dealing with the agrarian question, 113 n. 2, 
 209 ; giving jurisdiction to the knights, 212 ; against judicial corruption, 
 216; on the taxation of Asia, 218; on the consular provinces, 222; 
 establishing colonies, 224; for the making of roads, 228; proposal to 
 extend the franchise, 233 ; proposal for a change in the method of voting 
 at the Comitia Centuriata, 237. 
 
 Sempronia agraria (of Ti. Gracchus), in foil. 
 Servilia agraria, 116 n. 2. 
 Servilia judiciaria, 477 foil. 
 Servilia repetundarum, 309 n. 3. 
 Thoria, 288 n. 2. 
 
INDEX 501 
 
 Libraries, establishment of, in Rome, 22. 
 
 Licinia, wife of C. Gracchus, 149 ; final parting from Gracchus, 254 j property and 
 dowry of, 257 and n. 6. 
 
 Licinia, a vestal, accused of incest, 312. 
 
 Licinius Crassus, L., prosecutes Carbo, 282; supports the settlement at Narbo, 
 309; supports Caepio's judiciary law, 480, 481. 
 
 Licinius Crassus Mucianus, M., supports the scheme of Ti. Gracchus, no; chosen 
 agrarian commissioner, 149 ; secures the command against Aristonicus, 180 ; 
 his death in Asia, 148, 149, 181. 
 
 Licinius LucuUus, L., owner of a villa at Misenum, 12 n. 2 ; brings to Rome the 
 library of the Kings of Pontus, 22 ». 2. 
 
 Licinius LucuUus, P., attempts to secure re-election to the tribunate, 369. 
 
 Ligurians, settled on Italian soil, 61 ; victory of Scaurus over, 298 ; of the Roman 
 army in Numidia, 372, 409, 429; fortress captured by device of a Ligurian, 
 441 foil. 
 
 Limetanus, see Mamilius. 
 
 Limites Graccani, 149 n. i. 
 
 Litterarum obligatio, 52. 
 
 Livius Drusus, M. (the elder), threatens to veto the franchise bill of C. Gracchus, 
 237 ; his political views, use made of them by the senate, 239 ; proposes new 
 colonies, 240 ; frees the allotments from vectigal, 241, 286 ; proposes a law for 
 the protection of the Latins, 242 ; guarantees Italians and Latins in their hold- 
 ings, 288, 294. 
 
 Livius Drusus, M. (the younger), posessor of a large amount of silver-plate, 19 ; 
 attempt to make equestrian jurors liable for bribery, 216 «. 3 ; comparison with 
 his father, 239 ; colonial law of, 283 ». i ; judiciary law of, 478, 
 
 Longinus, see Cassius. 
 
 Lorbeus, 402 n. 2, 438. 
 
 Lucretius, an aedile, throws Ti. Gracchus's body into the Tiber, 143 ». ^. 
 
 LucuUus, see Licinius. 
 
 Ludi, Plebeii, Romani, 24; ludus talarius, 297 «. 3. 
 
 Lutatius Catulus, Q., his talents, 483 ; successive defeats for the consulship, 483, 
 
 485. 
 Luxury, growth of, 11 foil. ; attempts to check, 27 foil. 
 Lycaonia, given to the sons of Ariarathes V., 184. 
 
 Macedonia, working of the mines surrendered in, 49; taxes cut down, 219; C. 
 
 Porcius Cato, governor of, 295. 
 Mago, a town on Majorca, 188 n. 7. 
 
 Mago's work on agriculture, translated by order of the senate, 65. 
 Majorca, 188 ». 7. 
 
 Malaria, a consequence of the decline of agriculture in Italy, 70. 
 Mallius, Maximus, Cn., consul, 483 ; goes to Gaul and is defeated at Arausio, 484. 
 Malva, 440 ». 4. 
 Malvane, 440 n. 4 
 Mamilius Limetanus, C, tribune, proposes an inquiry into the conduct of the 
 
 adherents of Jugurtha, 375. 
 Mancinus, see Hostilius. 
 Mancinus, see Manlius. 
 
 Manlius, or Manilius (perhaps M. Manilius), appeals to Ti. Gracchus, 122. 
 Manlius, A., ofScer of Marius, commands in the retirement from the Muluccha, 4501 
 
 451 ; sent by Marius to Bocchus, 454. 
 Manlius Capitolinus, M., ultimate decree believed to have been used in movement 
 
 excited by, 141 «. i. 
 Manlius Mancinus, T., tribune, proposes that Marius should command m Numidian 
 
 War, 422. 
 Manlius Volso, Cn., introduces articles of luxury on his return from Asia, 19 ; golden 
 
 crowns borne in the triumph of, 32. 
 Mansoura, 336 ». i. 
 Mapalia, 318. 
 Marcellus, see Claudius. 
 
502 INDEX 
 
 Marcia, a vestal, accused of incest, 312. 
 
 Marcius Philippus, L., statement about the economic condition of Rome, 292 n. i. 
 
 Marius, C, early career of, 301 foil.; at Numantia, 302; assisted by the Metelli, 
 303 ; attains the tribunate, 303 ; carries a ballot law opposed by the senate, 304, 
 305 ; opposes a scheme for the distribution of corn, 306 ; defeated for the 
 aedileships, becomes praetor, 306; accused of ambitus but acquitted, 307; 
 propraetor in Farther Spain, 307 ; marries Julia, 307 ; legate to Metellus in the 
 Numidian War, 382 ; at the battle of Muthul, 394 ; conflict with Jugurtha at 
 Sicca, 403 ; growing ambition of, 410 ; sacrifice at Utica, 410, 420 «. 3 ; efforts 
 to return to Rome to seek the consulship, 411; intrigues with Gauda, 413; 
 believed to have aided in the condemnation of Turpilius, 416 ; goes to Rome, 
 420 ; agitation at Rome, 421, 423 ; elected consul, 422 ; given the command in 
 Numidia, 422 ; reform in the army, 61 ». 2, 424 ; assumes command in Africa, 
 434 ; first campaign, 435 foil. ; rejects the advances of Bocchus, 435 ; expedition 
 to Capsa, 438 ; capture of the town, 439 ; on the Muluccha, 440 foil. ; captures 
 a fortress, 441 foil. ; joined by Sulla with cavalry from Italy, 443, 444 ; retreat 
 from the Muluccha, 447 foil. ; arrives at Cirta, 453 ; consents to open negotia- 
 tions with Bocchus, 454 ; receives the envoys of Bocchus, 457 ; sends Sulla to 
 Bocchus, 459 ; receives Jugurtha as a prisoner, 465 ; probably begins the re- 
 settlement of Numidia, 465 ; triumph of, 468 ; elected consul a second time, 485 ; 
 is entrusted with the province of Gaul, 486 ; owner of a villa at Misenum, 12 ». 2. 
 
 Market-gardening, 80. 
 
 Martial-law, no provision for, in the | Roman constitution, 140; forbidden by C. 
 Gracchus, 200; declared against C. Gracchus and Flaccus, 251 ; theory of, as 
 thus employed, 258 ; questions raised by the employment of, 278. 
 
 Masinissa, King of Numidia, encourages agriculture in Numidia, 72, 320; territory 
 won by, 315, 351 n. 3, 429 n. i, 437 n. i ; death of, 321. 
 
 Massiva, son of Gulussa, 323 n. i ; at Rome, 362 ; murder of, 364. 
 
 Mastanabal, joint ruler of Numidia, 322. 
 
 Mauretania, white race in, 318; boundaries of, 349 n. a; ruled by Bocchus, 349; 
 increased after the war, 466. 
 
 Maximus, see Mallius. 
 
 Medjerda, 316, 351 ». 3. 
 
 Megalesia, 24, 25 n. 1, 28. 
 
 Megallis, wife of Damophilus, her treatment of her slaves, 93 ; put to death by her 
 slaves, 94. 
 
 Megara (suburb of Carthage), Ti. Gracchus at the storming of, 107. 
 
 Memmius, C, 344; criticises the conduct of Numidian affairs, 345; agitation 
 against the peace with Jugurtha, 355 foil. ; produces Jugurtha before the people, 
 361 ; opposes Caepio's judiciary law, 481. 
 
 Messala, see Valerius. 
 
 Messana, perhaps captured by the revolting slaves in Sicily, and taken by Piso, gS 
 n. I. 
 
 Metayer tenure, 79. 
 
 Metellus, see Caecilius. 
 
 Micipsa, King of Numidia, offers a supply of corn for Roman army in Sardinia, 195; 
 joint ruler of Numidia, 322 ; sole ruler, 322 ; sends Jugurtha to Numantia, 324; 
 names Jugurtha joint heir to the throne, 326 ; death of, 326. 
 
 Minorca, 188 «. 7, 
 
 Minturnae, rising of slaves at, 88. 
 
 Minucius Rufus, M., proposes the repeal of the Rubrian law, 248. 
 
 Minucius Rufus, Q., consul, obtains Macedonia as his province, 363. 
 
 Mithradates Euergetes of Pontus, assists the Romans against Aristonicus, 179 n, 4; 
 is rewarded with Phrygia, 185. 
 
 Monarchy in Numidia, 320. 
 
 Money-lending, 50 foil. 
 
 Morgantia, perhaps occupied by the Sicilian slaves, and taken by Piso, 98 n. li 
 death of Eunus at, 98. 
 
 Morocco, white race in, 318. 
 
 Mucius Scaevola, P., supports the scheme of Ti. Gracchus, tio; refuses to use 
 violence against Ti. Gracchus, 141 ; opinion about the property of Licinia, 237- 
 
INDEX 603 
 
 Mucius Scaevola, Q., prosecution and acquittal of, 295. 
 
 Muluccha, boundary between Mauretania and Numidia, 315, 440; Marius on the, 
 
 440 ; Marius's retirement from the, 447 foil. 
 Mulvian bridge, rebuilt by Scaurus, 421. 
 Mummius, L., conveys works of art from Corinth to Rome, 19. 
 Mummius, Q., replaces Octavius in the tribunate, 125 ; attempts to preside at the 
 
 tribunician elections, 137 ; president at the attempted re-election of Ti. Gracchus, 
 
 139. 
 Municipalities (Municipia), their interest in the public land, 7, 113, 118, 152 ; some 
 
 admitted to the franchise, 168 n. 2, 
 Murder, court for the trial of, 135, 210. 
 Muthul, 390 ; battle of the, 391 foil. 
 Myndus, taken by Aristonicus, 178. 
 Mysticism of the Asiatic slaves, 8g. 
 
 Nabdalsa, Numidian magnate, involved in the intrigues of Bomilctr against 
 Jugurtha, 418, 419. 
 
 Naraggara, 390. 
 
 Narbo Martius, foundation of, 308. 
 
 Nasica, see Cornelius. 
 
 Neapolis, the Greater Leptis called, 429 n. I. 
 
 Negotiatores, 49. 
 
 Neptunia, colony founded by C. Gracchus, 224, 283. 
 
 Nicomedes II. of Bithynia, secured by Roman support, 174 ; claims Phrygia, 184. 
 
 Nicopolis, benefactress of Sulla, 445. 
 
 Nobilior, see Fulvius. 
 
 Numantia, Ti. Gracchus at, 108, 109 ; capture of, by Scipio, 154 ; Micipsa assists 
 Rome against, 322. 
 
 Numidia, development of agriculture in, under Masinissa, 72 ; extent of kingdom of, 
 315 ; pe&tilence in, during reign of Micipsa, 322 ; standing army of, 322 ; parti- 
 tion of, between Jugurtha and Adherbal, 332, 333 ; war in, 346 foil. ; perhaps 
 granted to Jugurtha by the treaty with A. Albinus, 372 n. i ; lessons of the 
 Numidian War, 469 foil. ; western portion attached to Mauretania after the 
 war, 466, 
 
 Numidians, characteristics of, 318 foil.; as interpreted by Metellus, 386. 
 
 Numitorius PuUus, Q., betrays Fregellae, 171. 
 
 Nummularii, 52. 
 
 Octavius, M., vetoes the agrarian proposal of Ti. Gracchus, 120; deposition of, 
 124; attacked by a bill of C. Gracchus, 202. 
 
 Octavius Ruso, Cn., quaestor, escorts the envoys of Bocchus to Rome, 458. 
 
 Oea, 429 n. I. 
 
 Operae, exacted from freedmen, 57 «. i ; of the Viasii, 229 n. 2. 
 
 Opimius, L., takes Fregellae, 171 ; defeated at consular elections, 245 ; elected 
 consul, 248; scene on the Capitol, 249; seizes the Capitol, 250; invested by 
 the senate with full powers against C. Gracchus and Flaccus, 251 ; refuses to 
 discuss terms, 254 ; crushes the movement, 254 foil. ; founds a temple to 
 Harmony, 258 ; prosecution and acquittal of, 278, 279 ; head of the commission 
 to Numidia, 332 ; condemned by the Mamilian commission, 378. 
 
 Orestes, see AureUus. 
 
 Oulad-bon-salem, 316. 
 
 Palma, founded by Metellus Balearicus, 189, 284 n. 1. 
 
 Pamphylia, 187. 
 
 Papirius Carbo, C, chosen agrarian commissioner, 149 ; tribunate of, 149, 155, 163 ; 
 introduces voting by ballot in legislative assemblies, 163 ; proposes that 
 tribunes should be re-eligible, 164 ; suspected of complicity in the death of 
 Scipio, 161 ; defends Opimius, 281 ; prosecuted by Crassus and condemned, 282. 
 
 Participes, 44. 
 
 Pasturage, conditions and growth of, 67. 
 
 Paulus, see Aemilius. 
 
504 INDEX 
 
 Peculation, 37. 
 
 Peculatus, standing court for, 37 », 4. 
 
 Peducaeus, Sex., carries a law for the trial of the vestals, 312. 
 
 Peraea, remains in possession of Rhodes, 184. 
 
 Peregrini, as competitors of the Roman artisans, 58 ; protection of, by the tribune, 236. 
 
 Pergamon, Kingdom of, bequeathed to Rome, 129, 175 ; relations to Rome, 172 ; 
 becomes the province of Asia, 183. 
 
 Peristyle, adopted at Rome, 16. 
 
 Perpenna, M., sent against Aristonicus, 181 ; victory and death of, 182. 
 
 Philippus, see Marcius. 
 
 Phrygia, the Greater, treatment of, in organisation of the province of Asia, 184 foil. 
 
 Piracy, in connection with the slave-trade, 81. 
 
 Pirates, attitude of, during the slave-revolt in Sicily, 97 n, 3. 
 
 Piso, see Calpurnius. 
 
 Plantation-system, 36, 64, 76. 
 
 Plerainius, Q., arrest and death of, 38 n. 2. 
 
 Political ideas of the time of the Gracchi, 105. 
 
 Politores, 79. 
 
 Pollentia, founded by Metellus Balearicus, 189, 284 n. i. 
 
 Pollio, see Asinius. 
 
 Polybius, on the purity of Roman officials, 37 ; on the constitution oHbe companies 
 of state-contractors, 43, 44 ». i ; on the character of the Roman constitution, 
 102, 105. 
 
 Pompeius (perhaps Q.), attacks Ti. Gracchus, 130. 
 
 Pomponius, M., heroic defence of C. Gracchus, 256. 
 
 Poor of Rome, condition of, 203. 
 
 Popillius Laenas, C, legate, impeached for a disgracefiil treaty, 482. 
 
 Popillius Laenas, P. (consul 132 B.C.), praetor in Sicily about the time of the slave-re- 
 volt, 96 n. 3 ; commissioner for trying the adherents of Ti. Gracchus, 146 ; 
 records his activity in carrying out Gracchus's agrarian law, 149 ; exiled, 201 ; 
 recalled &om exile, 279, 
 
 Population, probable decline in, after the great wars, 61. 
 
 Porcina, see Aemilius. 
 
 Porcius Cato, C, convicted of extortion, 295 ; defeated by the Scordisci in Thrace, 
 293, 311; condemned by the Mamilian commission, 378. 
 
 Porcius Cato, M., his statement about the luxury of the age, 18 ; his system of rating 
 articles of value, 28 ; means by which he increased his wealth, 35 ; attacks com- 
 manders with reference to the distribution of booty, 37 ; bears witness against 
 Glabrio, 38; protects provincials, 38, 51; conflict with the Publicani, 48; his 
 views on usury, 50 ; on the merits of pasturage, 68 ; hostility to Carthage, 72 ; 
 his sketch of an agricultural estate, 78 ; his views on relative degrees of pro- 
 ductivity, 80 ; as an owner of slaves, 83, 84; reference to an agrarian law, 112. 
 Portico of Metellus, statue of Cornelia in, 260. 
 
 Portoria, 28 ». 3 ; revenue from, 7 ». i ; theory of, 45 n. 2 ; new, created by C. 
 
 Gracchus, 218. 
 Possession, system of, one of the causes of the accumulation of land by the few, 
 
 73 foil. 
 Postumius, Sp., consul 186 b.c, 5. 
 
 Postumius Albinus, A., left by his brother in Numidia, 369 ; undertakes an enter- 
 prise against Jugurtha, 369 foil. ; march on Suthul, 370 ; disaster at Suthul, and 
 compact with Jugurtha, 372. 
 Postumius Albinus, Sp., consul, entrusted with the war in Numidia, 363 ; supports 
 Massiva, 363 ; action on the murder of Massiva, 364 ; attitude to the war, 366 ; 
 campaign of, 367 ; returns to Rome, 368 ; proconsul of Numidia, 369, 373 «. I ; 
 returns to Africa, 374 ; condemned by the Mamilian commission, 378. 
 Praeneste, suffers from the requisitions of a consul, 38 ; threatened by slaves, 87. 
 Praetor peregrinus, draws up the list of judices, 215 ; protection of peregrini 
 
 against, 263 n. 3. 
 Praetors, perhaps liable under Gracchan law against judicial corruption, 217. 
 Prices, for house property, 12 ; for cooks, 17 ; for luxuries of the household, 18 ; for 
 slaves, 82. 
 
INDEX 605 
 
 Procuratores, 83 «. 4, 85 n. i. 
 
 Proletarii, excluded from the census lists, 61 «. i. 
 
 Prophet, looked for by the Asiatic slaves, 89 ; cf. Eunus. 
 
 Protection, of Italian vines and olives, 80 ; as a remedy for agrarian evils, 267. 
 
 Provinces, suffer from the exactions of governors, 38 foil. 
 
 Provocatio, as a substitute for citizenship in the franchise bill of Flaccus, 168; 
 
 establishment of commissions by senate a violation of, igg. 
 Prusias II., King of Bithynia, 174. 
 
 Ptolemy Euergetes, King of Egypt, suitor of Cornelia, 104 n. 2. 
 Publican!, companies of, 42 foil. ; political activity of, 48 ; position of the Decumani 
 
 amongst, 220. 
 Python, put to death by Eunus, 94. 
 
 QuAESTiONES perpetuae, 135, 199 ; quaestio de ambitu, 307 «. 2, see Murder and 
 
 Extortion. 
 Quaestor, relation to his commander, 444. 
 Quinctius Flamininus, T., golden crowns borne in the triumph of, 32. 
 
 Recuperatores, for the trial of cases of extortion, 39. 
 
 Regulus, legend of, 77 ; story of the Reguli, 476 «. 3 ; cf. Atilius. 
 
 Roads, made by C. Gracchus, 228 ; land assigned for the maintenance of, 229, 290. 
 
 Romanism, as a product of Hellenism, 11. 
 
 Rubrius, president at the tribunician elections, 137. 
 
 Rubrius, proposes a colony at Carthage, 227. 
 
 Rufus, one of the authors of the death of Ti. Gracchus, 142. 
 
 Rufus, see Minucius and Rutilius. 
 
 Rupilius, P. (consul 132 B.C.), sent against the slaves in Sicily, captures Tauro- 
 menium, 98 ; puts an end to the revolt and reorganises the province, 99 ; 
 commissioner for trying the adherents of Ti. Gracchus, 146 ; condemned, 202. 
 
 Rusicade, 335. 
 
 Ruso, lee Octavius, 
 
 Rutilius Rufus, P., character and ability, 484; serves under Scipio in Spain, 484; 
 legate to Metellus in the Numidian War, 382 ; at the battle of the Muthul, 393, 
 394.. 397; hands over the army to Marius, 434; elected consul, 484; limits the 
 services demanded of freedmen, 57 n. i, 484; introduces bonorum possessio in 
 the interests of debtors, 484. 
 
 Sabrata, 429 n. 1. 
 
 Sacrifice, human, surviving in 113 B.C., prohibited in 97 B.C., 314. 
 
 Sahara, aborigines of the, 317. 
 
 Sahel, plains of, 316, 
 
 Saldae, 466. 
 
 Samos, taken by Aristonicus, 178. 
 
 Saranus, 476 n. 3. 
 
 Sarapion, a Syrian, betrays Tauromenium, 98. 
 
 Sardinia, supplies of grain drawn from, 71 ; purchase of corn from, 72 ». 4 ; slaves 
 from, 81, 83; war in, 188; C. Gracchus quaestor in, 195. 
 
 Saturius, P., one of the authors of the death of Ti. Gracchus, 142. 
 
 Scaevola, see Mucins. 
 
 Scaurus, see Aemilius. 
 
 Schak BenElr, 402 ». 2. 
 
 Scipio, see Cornelius. 
 
 Scipios, trial of the, 37. 
 
 Scordisci defeat C. Porcius Cato, 295. 
 
 Scylacium, colony at, established by C. Gracchus, 224, 283. 
 
 Seleucus Callinicus, King of Syria, 185. 
 
 Sempronia, sister of the Gracchi, married to Scipio Aemilianus, 103, 160; suspected 
 of complicity in the death of Scipio, 161. 
 
 Sempronius Gracchus, C, description of his brother's journey through Etruria, 109 ; 
 elected agrarian commissioner, 127 ; marries Licinia, 149 ; suspected of com- 
 plicity in the death of Scipio, 161 ; opposes the alien act of Pennus, 167, 194; 
 
 82* 
 
506 INDEX 
 
 accused, but acquitted, of participation in the revolt of Fregellae, 172, 198 ; 
 speech on the question of Phrygia, 186; his characteristics and oratorical 
 power, igi foil.; speech on Carbo's bill for legalising re-election to the tribun- 
 ate, 194 ; quaestor in Sardinia, 194; return to Rome and appearance before the 
 censors, ig6 ; attacks the life of the nobility, 197 ; enters on his first tribunate, 
 ig8 ; legislation of, 199 foil., 233 foil. (cf. Lex Sempronia) ; triumvir for es- 
 tablishing colony at Carthage, 228 ; secures the election of Fannius, 230 ; be- 
 comes tribune a second time, 230; personal government during his second 
 tribunate, 231 ; his audiences, 15 «. 3, 232 ; opposes the edict excluding Italians 
 from Rome, 236 ; absence in Africa, 243 ; returns to Rome, 245 ; attempts to 
 recover his position, 246; fails in securing re-election to the tribunate, 247; 
 his attitude after his defeat, 248 ; scene at the Capitol, 249 ; interrupts a meet- 
 ing summoned by the tribune, 250 ; accompanies Flaccus to the Aventine, 253 ; 
 death of, 256 ; execution of his adherents, 257. 
 
 Sempronius Gracchus, Ti. (the elder), as censor, 27, 131 ; conflict with the Publicani, 
 48 ; his influence in Rome and the empire, 103. 
 
 Sempronius Gracchus, Ti. (the younger), early life and training, 103 foil. ; character 
 of, 106 ; chosen as augur, 106 ; marriage, 107 ; goes with Scipio to Africa, 
 107 ; quaestor in Spain, 108 ; conclusion of the Numantine treaty, 108 ; motives 
 which urged him to reform, 109; tribunate, speeches introductory to his 
 legislation, no; the agrarian scheme, in foil.; opposed by Octavius, rein- 
 troduces the law in a more drastic form, 121 ; declares a justitium, 122 ; permits 
 reference to the senate, 123 ; deposes Octavius, 124; elected agrarian commis- 
 sioner, 127 ; gives judicial powers to the commission, 127 ; his popularity with 
 the masses, 128 ; proposes to distribute the legacy of Attalus, 129 ; attacks of 
 senators on, 130; defends the deposition of Octavius, 132; frames a new 
 programme, 134; attempts to become tribune a second time, 137; riot at the 
 election, 139 foil. ; fall of, 142; consequences of his fall, 143. 
 
 Sempronius Tuditanus, C, quits the work of agrarian settlement and goes to 
 lUyria, 158 ; attacks the lapudes and Histri, 187. 
 
 Senate, its control of the state-contracts, 43, 221 ; criticises the agrarian scheme of 
 Ti. Gracchus, 123 ; cuts down the supplies of the commission, 128 ; delibera- 
 tions of, before the fall of Ti. Gracchus, 140 ; weakness of, in a political crisis, 
 143 ; intellectual and moral defects of, 144 ; attitude of, after death of Ti, 
 Gracchus, 145 foil. ; establishes a commission to try his adherents, 146 ; sug- 
 gests the alien act of Pennus, 166 ; policy with respect to Phrygia, 185 foil. ; 
 denial of senate's right to create special judicial commissioners without appeal, 
 135. 199; puts forward Livius Drusus to outbid C. Gracchus, 239; frees the 
 allotments from vectigal, 241 ; declares martial law against C. Gracchus and 
 Flaccus, 351 ; policy after.the fall of C. Gracchus, 283 foil. ; opposes the ballot 
 law of Marius, 304 ; attitude to the Numidian question, 331, 336, 337, 340, 34s, 
 35o> 354. 363, 365, 373, 399, 422, 470; provisional acceptance of Bocchus as an 
 ally, 458 ; probable attitude to Caepio's judiciary law, 479, 480, 
 
 Serranus, or Saranus, the family name, 476 ». 3. 
 
 Servilius Caepio, Cn., censor, C. Gracchus's appearance before, ig6. 
 
 Servilius Caepio, Q., consul, 106 B.C., judiciary law of, 477 foil. ; the law passed and 
 immediately repealed, 482 ; Caepio goes to Gaul, 482. 
 
 Servilius Glaucia, C., character and position of, 309; tribunate of, 310; carries a 
 law of extortion, 310. 
 
 Setia, rising of slaves at, 87. 
 
 Share-holders, in the public companies, 44. 
 
 Sicca Veneria, 316, 390; strategic importance of, 402 ». 2; revolts to Rome, 403; 
 Marius near, 436 ; doubtful whether added to province of Africa, 466 ». 4. 
 
 Siceliots, as slave owners, 90, 92. 
 
 Sicily, assessment of the land-tax in, 47, 73, 219 ; latifundia in, 64, 71 ; economic 
 dependence of Rome on, 71 ; enforced purchase of corn from, 72 «. 4 ; slaves 
 from, 81 ; slavery in, 89 foil. ; revolt of slaves in, 93 foil. ; behaviour of the free 
 peasantry of, during the slave-revolt, 97 ; final suppression of the revolt and 
 renewed organisation of the province by Rupilius, 99; colonies in, proposed by 
 Livius Drusus, 240 ; P. Lentulus retires to, 280. 
 
 Side, slave market at, 82, 
 
INDEX 607 
 
 Siege, state of, set Maitial law. 
 
 Silanus, see Turpilius. 
 
 Silver-plate, value attached to, i8. 
 
 Sinuessa, rising of slaves at, 88. 
 
 Sipontum, desertion of the colony at, 5. 
 
 Sitifis, 466 n. 4. 
 
 Slaves, urban and rustic familia, 16 ; town establishment of, 16 foil. ; employed by 
 the Publican!, 45 ; competition writh the Roman artisans, 56, 203 ; slavery as 
 one of the causes of celibacy, 63 ; preferred to freemen as labourers, 77 ; slave- 
 labour in Italy, 81 foil. ; tradition that Marius enrolled slaves in the army, 452 
 n. I ; the shepherd-slaves of Italy, 85 ; revolts of slaves in Italy, 86 foil. ; great 
 movement among the slave populations of the Mediterranean, 88 ; the agricul- 
 tural slaves of Sicily, 89 ; the pastoral slaves of Sicily, 90 ; Slave War in Sicily, 
 93 foil. ; Asiatic slaves join the revolt of Aristonicus, 178 ; said to have been 
 summoned to arms by Fulvius Flaccus, 253 ; possibility of restriction of slave- 
 labour, 266. 
 
 Socii (partners in the public companies), 44 ; allies of Rome, see Italians. 
 
 Sortitio for provinces, sometimes manipulated, 380 n. 2. 
 
 Soudan, caravans of the, 437 n. i. 
 
 Spain, slaves from, 81. 
 
 Spoils of war, 32. 
 
 Stratonice, mother of Attains III., 173 ; tomb raised to bet by her son, 175. 
 
 Stratonicea, Aristonicus surrenders at, 182. 
 
 Sulla, see Cornelius. 
 
 Sulpicius Galba, C, condemned by the Mamilian commission, 378. 
 
 Sumptuary laws, 28 foil. 
 
 Suthul, 370. 
 
 Sybaris, inland possessions of, 3 ». I ; imports wool through Miletus, 67. 
 
 Syphax, 316, 350. 
 
 Syrians, as slaves, 82, ». 2, 88, 89, 91, 98 ; the name applied to the subjects of 
 Eunus, 94. 
 
 Tabarka, 316. 
 
 Tablinum, 13, 15. 
 
 Tana, 438. 
 
 Tarentum, colony established by C. Gracchus near, 225. 
 
 Tauromenium, seized by the revolting slaves in Sicily, 96 ; taken by Rupilius, 98. 
 
 Taxation, limit to incidence of, 6in. 2; of Asia, 218 ; cf. Portoria. 
 
 Teanum Sidicinum, quaestor of, scourged, 235. 
 
 Tebessa, 437 n, i. 
 
 Tell, region of the, 319, 437 ». I. 
 
 Telmissus, restored to the Lycian confederation, 184. 
 
 Termini of the agrarian commissioners, 149 n. i. 
 
 Thabraca, 316, 351 ». 3. ^ 
 
 Thagaste, 390. 
 
 Thala, near Ammaedara, 390, 426 n. 3. 
 
 Thala, near Capsa, site of, 426 n. 3 ; Jugurtha at, 426 ; Metellus's expedition to, 
 
 427 ; capture of, 428. 
 Thenae, 316, 438 «. 3. 
 Theveste, 390. 
 Thirmida, 327. 
 
 Thorius, Sp., author of an agrarian law, 288. 
 thracian, mercenaries in the army of Aristonicus, 179, 181 ; of the Roman army in 
 
 Numidia, 372, 402; Chersonese annexed to Macedonia, 184. 
 Thugga, 457 ». 3. 
 
 Thyatira, taken by Aristonicus, 178. 
 Tisidium, 409. 
 Tithes, payment of, 218. 
 Trade, possibilities of, for members of the senatorial order, 330 foil. ; open to the 
 
 Equites, 41 foil. ; import trade to Rome, 53 ; as practised by the lower classes 
 
 at Rome, 55; prejudice against small trade, 58; influence on jurisdiction, 217. 
 
608 INDEX 
 
 Trajan, reorganises the army for the invasion of Parthia, 459. 
 
 Transpadani, receive Latin rights, 233 ». 3. 
 
 Tribunate, Polybius's view of the functions of the, 105 ; Ti. Gracchus on the nature 
 of the, 133; immediate re-election to, 137, 149, I55> 163, 164; modified re-elec- 
 tion to, 165 ; sanctity of, 148 ; crisis in (no B.C.), 369. 
 
 Tribunician veto, not permitted in assignment of consular provinces, 222 ;, right of, 
 to protect peregrini, 236. 
 
 Trientabula, 113. 
 
 Trigemina, gate of, 256. 
 
 Tripolis, 429 n. i ; doubtful whether incorporated into the empire, 466 m. 4. 
 
 Tryphon, the name borne by Diodotus, King of Syria, 95. 
 
 Tucca, 456 n. 4, 457 «. 3. 
 
 Turpilius Silanus, T., Roman commandant at Vaga, 414, 417 n. 2 ; spared in the 
 massacre, 415 ; humanity of, 416 ; trial and execution of, 416, 417. 
 
 Tusca, 316. 
 
 Ubus, 370, 390 «. I. 
 
 Utica, 351, 429 ; sacrifice of Marius at, 410, 420 n, 3. 
 
 Vaga, 316, 351 n. 3, 388, 390, 401, 413 ; occupation of, by Metellus, 388; massacre 
 of the Roman garrison at, 414; doubtful -whether added to the province of 
 Afi:ica, 466 n. 4. 
 
 Valerius Flaccus, L., fails in securing the command against Aristonicus, 179. 
 
 Valerius Messala, M., accused of extortion, 477 n. 3. 
 
 Velarii, 16 ». 4. 
 
 Venusia, cowherd of, scourged to death, 235. 
 
 Vespillo, 143 n. 2. 
 
 Vestals, trial of the, 3 12 foil. 
 
 Vettius, defended by C. Gracchus. 194. 
 
 Via Aemilia, 421 n. 3. 
 
 Viasii vicani, 229 n, 2, 
 
 Vicesima libertatis, revenue from, 7 n. i. 
 
 Villicae, 79, 83 n. 4. 
 
 Villicus, 12 «. I, 79, 80, 83 n. 4, 85. 
 
 Villius, C, put to death as a supporter of Ti. Gracchus, 147. 
 
 Viriathus, Micipsa assists Rome against, 322. 
 
 Volux, son of Bocchus, joins his father in assailing the Romans during the retire- 
 ment firom the Muluccha, 451 ; escorts Sulla to Bocchus, 459. 
 
 Wad Bedja, 351 «. 3. 
 Wad ed-Derb, 438 ». 3. 
 Wad el-Kebir, 316. 
 Wad Lebem, or Leben, 426 «. 3. 
 Wad Mellag, 390, 402 «. 2. 
 Wad Mghar-el-Ghrin, 429 n. i. 
 Wad Muluja, 440 ». 4. 
 Wad Remel, 336. 
 Wad Tina, 438 «. 3. 
 Wad Zouatin, 390 ». 1. 
 
 Wealth, burdens on, 23 foil. ; means of acquiring, 32 foil. ; decline in the possessors 
 of moderate wealth at Rome, 61. 
 
 Zama Regia, 316, 390, 401, 403; site of, 402 n. 2; besieged by Metellus, 403 foil.; 
 
 the siege raised, 406. 
 Zanfour, 402 n. 2. 
 Zeuxis, slays Damophilus at Enna, 94. 
 
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28 
 
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 35 
 
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36 
 
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Fiction 
 
 37 
 
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 The first volumes are — 
 
 Balfour (Andrew). VENGEANCE IS 
 
 MINE. 
 TO ARMS. 
 Baring-Gould (S,). MRS. CURGENVEN 
 
 OF CURGENVEN. 
 DOMITIA. 
 THE FROBISHERS. 
 Barlow (Jane). Author of 'Irish Idylls. 
 
 FROM THE EAST UNTO "THE 
 
 WEST 
 A CREEL OF IRISH STORIES. 
 THE FOUNDING OF FORTUNES. 
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 Bartram (George), thirteen even. 
 
 INGS. 
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 CAPSINA. 
 
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 THE CHARMER. 
 THE SQUIREEN. 
 THE RED LEAGUERS. 
 
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 SALT SEAS. 
 THE CLASH OF ARMS. 
 DENOUNCED. „„„ 
 
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 THE BRANDED PRINCE. 
 THE FOUNDERED GALLEON. 
 
 SONS OF ADVER- 
 WOUNDS IN THE 
 
 JOHN TOPP. 
 
 Clifford (Mrs. W. K.). A FLASH OF 
 
 SUMMER. 
 Collingwood (Harry). THE DOCTOR 
 
 OFTHE 'JULIET.' 
 Cornfield (L. Gope). 
 
 SITY. 
 Crane (Stephen). 
 
 RAIN. 
 
 Denny (C. E.). THE romance of 
 
 UPFOLD MANOR. 
 Dickson (Harris). THE BLACK WOLF'S 
 
 BREED. 
 Emhree (C. F.). HEART OF FLAME. 
 Fenn (G. Mamrtlle). AN ELECTRIC 
 
 SPARK. 
 Findlater (Mary). OVER THE HILLS. 
 Forrest (E. E.). THE SWORD OF 
 
 AZRAEL. 
 Francis (M. E.). MISS ERIN. 
 Gallon (Tom). RICKERBY'S FOLLY. 
 Gerard (Dorothea). THINGS THAT 
 
 HAVE HAPPENED. 
 
 Glanvllle (Ernest). THE DESPATCH 
 
 RIDER. 
 
 THE LOST REGIMENT. 
 
 THE INCA'S TREASURE. 
 
 Gordon (Julien). MRS. CLYDE. 
 
 WORLD'S PEOPLE. 
 
 GOSB (C. F.). THE REDEMPTION OF 
 DAVID CORSON. 
 
 Hales (A. G.). JAIR THE APOSTATE. 
 
 Hamilton (LordEmest). MARY HAMIL- 
 TON. 
 
38 
 
 Messrs. Methuen's Catalogue 
 
 Harrison <Mrs. Burton). A PRINCESS- 
 
 OF THE HILLS. Illustrated. 
 Hooper (I.). THE SINGER OF MARLY. 
 
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 BUBBLE. 
 'Iota' (Mrs. Cafltyn). ANNE MAULE- 
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 Kelly (Florence rinoh). with hoops 
 
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 Linden (Annie), a woman of senti- 
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 CROWN. 
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 IN THE DESERT. 
 
 M'QueenGray(E.) MY stewardship. 
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 the unseen, 
 garnered. 
 
 a METAMORPHOSIS. 
 
 marvels and mysteries. 
 
 BOTH sides OF THE VEIL. 
 
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 SYREN. 
 
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 Moore (Arthur). THE KNIGHT PUNC- 
 TILIOUS. 
 
 NesWt (Mrs. Bland). THE LITERARY 
 SENSE. 
 
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 THE LADY'S WALK. 
 
 SIR ROBERT'S FORTUNE. 
 
 THE TWO MARY'S. 
 
 Penny (Mrs. F. A.). A MIXED MARRI- 
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 FANCY FREE. 
 
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 Raymond (Walter). FORTUNE'S DAR- 
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 ACCUSER. 
 
 BARBARAS MONEY. 
 
 THE ENTHUSIAST. 
 
 A GREAT LADY. 
 
 THE LOVE THAT OVERCAMK 
 
 THE MASTER OF BEECHWOOD. 
 
 UNDER SUSPICION. 
 
 THE YELLOW DIAMOND. 
 
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 Only a Guard-Room Dog. By Edith E. 
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 Little Peter. By Lucas Malet. Second 
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 Master Rockafellar's Voyage. By W. 
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 By 
 
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 Syd Belton : Or, the Boy who would not go 
 
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 Georges. 
 
 Crop-Eared Jacquot; Jane; Etc. 
 
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 Amaury 
 
Fiction 
 
 39 
 
 The Castle op Eppstein. 
 
 The Snowball, and Sultanetta. 
 
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 ACTri. 
 
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 *Fernande. Illustrated in Colour by Munro 
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 Austen (Jane). PRIDE and pre- 
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 Baden-Powell (Major-General E. S. S.). 
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 kitty ALONE. 
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 MRS KEITH'S CRIME. 
 
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 MARY BARTON. 
 NORTH AND SOUTH, 
 
40 
 
 Messrs. Methuen's Catalogue 
 
 Gerard (Dorothea). HOLY MATRI- 
 
 MONY. 
 THE CONQUEST OF LONDON. 
 Glssing(George). THE TOWN travel. 
 
 LER. 
 THE CROWN OF LIFE. 
 GlanvUle (Emest). THE INCA'S 
 
 TREASURE. 
 THE KLOOF BRIDE. 
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 Grimm (The Brothers). GRIMM'S 
 
 FAIRY TALES. Illustrated. 
 
 Hope (Anthony). A MAN OF MARK. 
 
 A CHANGE OF AIR. 
 
 THE CHRONICLES OF COUNT 
 
 ANTONIO. 
 PHROSO. 
 
 THE DOLLY DIALOGUES. 
 Homung (E. W.). DEAD MEN TELL 
 
 NO TALES. 
 
 Innraham (J. H.). THE THRONE OF 
 
 DAVID. 
 Le Queux fW.). THE HUNCHBACK OF 
 
 WESTMINSTER. 
 Linton (E. Lynn). THE TRUE HIS- 
 TORY OF JOSHUA DAVIDSON, 
 lyall (Edna). DERRICK VAUGHAN. 
 ilalet (Lucas). THE CARISSIMA. 
 A COUNSEL OF PERFECTION. 
 Mann (Mrs. M. E.) MRS. PETER 
 
 HOWARD. 
 A LOST ESTATE. 
 THE CEDAR STAR. 
 Marohmont (A. W.). MISER HOAD- 
 
 LEY'S SECRET. 
 A MOMENT'S ERROR. 
 Marryat (Captain). PETER SIMPLE. 
 JACOB FAITHFUL. 
 Marsh (Richard). THE TWICKENHAM 
 
 PEERAGE 
 THE GODDESS. 
 THE JOSS. 
 
 Mason (A. E. W.]. CLEMENTINA. 
 Mathers (Helen). HONEY. 
 GRIFF OF GRIFFITHSCOURT. 
 SAM'S SWEETHEART. 
 Meade (Mrs. L. T.). DRIFT. 
 Mitford (Bertram). THE SIGN OF THE 
 
 SPIDER. 
 Montr^sor (F.F.). THE ALIEN. 
 
 Moore (Arthur). THE GAY DECEIVERS 
 Morrison (Arthur). THE HOLE IN 
 
 THE WALL. 
 Nesbit (_E.). THE RED HOUSE. 
 NorriB(W.E.). HIS GRACE. 
 GILES INGILBY. 
 THE CREDIT OF THE COUNTY. 
 LORD LEONARD. 
 MATTHEW AUSTIN. 
 CLARISSA FURIOSA. 
 Oliphant (Mrs.). THE LADY'S WALK. 
 SIR ROBERT'S FORTUNE. 
 
 Oppenhelm (E. Phillips), master of 
 
 MEN. 
 
 Parker (Gilbert). THE pomp of the 
 
 LAVILETTES. 
 WHEN VALMOND CAMETO PONTIAC. 
 THE TRAIL OF THE SWORD. 
 Pemberton (Max). THE FOOTSTEPS 
 
 OF A THRONE. 
 I CROWN THEE KING. 
 PhillpottS (Eden). THE HUMAN BOY. 
 CHILDREN OF THE MIST. 
 Ridge (W.Pett). A SON OF THE STATE. 
 LOST PROPERTY. 
 GEORGE AND THE GENERAL. 
 Russell (W. Clark). A MARRIAGE at 
 
 SEA. 
 ABANDONED. 
 
 MY DANISH SWEETHEART. 
 Sergeant (Adeline), THE MASTER OF 
 
 BEECHWOOD. 
 BARBARA'S MONEY. 
 THE YELLOW DIAMOND. 
 Surtees (R. S.). HANDLEY CROSS. 
 
 Illustrated. 
 MR. SPONGE'S SPORTING TOUR. 
 
 Illustrated. 
 ASK MAMMA. Illustrated. 
 
 Valentine (Major E. S.). VELDT AND 
 
 LAAGER. 
 Walford (Mrs. L. B.) MR. SMITH. 
 THE BABY'S GRANDMOTHER. 
 
 WaUace (General Lew). ben-HUR. 
 
 THE FAIR GOD. 
 
 Watson (H. B. Harriot). THE adven- 
 turers. 
 ■Weekes (A. B.). PRISONERS OF WAR. 
 ■Wells (H.G.). THE STOLEN BACILLUS.