CHAPTER III
Litigation under the Law of Gracchus--Scipio Æmilianus employed
in it -- His Mysterious Death -- Gaius Gracchus elected Tribune -- He
gives the Judicial Power to Knights--Demands Roman Citizenship for
Italian Allies--Sails to
Africa
with Fulvius Flaccus--Rioting in
Rome after his Return--Death of Gracchus and
Flaccus
[
18]
After Gracchus was slain Appius Claudius died, and Fulvius Flaccus and
Papirius Carbo were appointed, in conjunction with the younger Gracchus, to
divide the land. As the persons in possession neglected to hand in lists of
their holdings, a proclamation was issued that informers should furnish
testimony against them. Immediately a great number of embarrassing lawsuits
sprang up. Wherever a new field had been bought adjoining an old one, or
wherever a division of land had been made with allies, the whole district
had to be carefully inquired into on account of the measurement of this one
field, to discover how it had been sold and how divided. Not all owners had
preserved their contracts, or their allotment titles, and even those that
were found were often ambiguous. When the land was resurveyed some owners
were obliged to give up their fruit-trees and farm-buildings in exchange for
naked ground. Others were transferred from cultivated to uncultivated lands,
or to swamps, or pools. In fact, the measuring had not been carefully done
when the land was first taken from the enemy. As the original proclamation
authorized anybody to work the undistributed land who wished to do so, many
had been prompted to cultivate the parts immediately adjoining their own,
till the line of demarkation
between them had faded from
view. The progress of time also made many changes. Thus the injustice done
by the rich, although great, was not easy of ascertainment. So there was
nothing but a general turn-about, all parties being moved out of their own
places and settled down in other people's.
[19]
The Italian allies who complained of these disturbances,
and
especially of the lawsuits hastily brought against them, chose Cornelius
Scipio, the destroyer of
Carthage, to defend them against these grievances. As he
had availed himself of their very valiant services in war he was reluctant
to disregard their request. So he came into the Senate, and although, out of
regard for the plebeians, he did not openly find fault with the law of
Gracchus, he expatiated on its difficulties and held that these causes ought
not to be decided by the triumvirs, because they did not possess the
confidence of the litigants, but should be turned over to others. As his
view seemed reasonable, they yielded to his persuasion, and the consul
Tuditanus was appointed to give judgment in these cases. But when he took
hold of the work he saw the difficulties of it, and marched against the
Illyrians as a pretext for not acting as judge, and since nobody brought
cases for trial before the triumvirs they relapsed into idleness. From this
cause hatred and indignation arose among the people against Scipio because
they saw him, in whose favor they had often opposed the aristocracy and
incurred their enmity, electing him consul twice contrary to law, now taking
the side of the Italian allies against them. When Scipio's enemies observed
this, they cried out that he was determined to abolish the law of Gracchus
utterly and was about to inaugurate armed strife and bloodshed for that
purpose.
[20]
When the people heard these charges they were in a state of alarm until
Scipio, after placing near his couch at home one evening a tablet on which
he intended to write during the night the speech he intended to deliver
before the people, was found dead in his bed without a wound. Whether this
was done by Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi (aided by her daughter,
Sempronia, who was married to Scipio, and was unloved and unloving because
she was deformed and childless), lest the law of Gracchus should be
abolished, or whether, as some think, he committed suicide because he saw
plainly that he could not accomplish what he had promised, is not known.
Some say that slaves, who were subjected to torture, testified that unknown
persons were introduced through the rear of the house by night who
suffocated him, and that those who knew about it hesitated to tell because
the people were angry with him still and rejoiced at his death. So died
Scipio, and although he had been of immense service to the Roman power he
was not honored with a public funeral; so much does the anger of the present
moment outweigh gratitude for the past. And this event, sufficiently
important in itself, took place as an incident of the sedition of
Gracchus.1
[21]
Those who were in possession of the lands even after these events postponed
the division on various pretexts for a very long time. Some thought that the
Italian allies, who made the greatest resistance to it, ought to be admitted
to Roman citizenship so that, out of gratitude for the greater favor, they
should no longer quarrel about the
land. The Italians were glad to accept
this, because they
preferred Roman citizenship to
possession of the fields. Fulvius Flaccus, who was then both consul and
triumvir, exerted himself to the utmost to bring it about, but the Senate
was angry at the proposal to make their subjects
equal citizens with themselves.
For this reason the attempt
was abandoned, and the people,
who had been so long in the hope of acquiring land, became disheartened.
While they were in this mood Gaius Gracchus, who had made himself agreeable
to them as a triumvir, offered himself for the tribuneship. He was the
younger brother of Tiberius Gracchus, the promoter of the law, and had been
silent for some time on the subject of the fate of his brother, but since
many of the senators treated him scornfully he announced
himself as a
candidate for the office of tribune.
As soon as he was
elected to this distinguished position he began to lay plots against the
Senate, and proposed that a monthly distribution of corn should be made to
each citizen at the public expense, which had not been customary before.
Thus he got the leadership of the people quickly by one measure of policy,
in which he had the coöperation of Fulvius Flaccus. Directly after
that he was chosen tribune for the following year, for in cases where there
was not a sufficient number of candidates the law authorized the people to
choose from the whole number then in office.
[22]
Thus Gaius Gracchus became tribune a second time. Having bought the
plebeians, as it were, he began, by another like political
manœuvre, to court the equestrian order, who hold the middle place
between the Senate and the plebeians. He transferred the courts of justice,
which had become discredited by reason of bribery, from the senators to the
knights, reproaching the former especially with the recent examples of
Aurelius Cotta, Salinator, and, third in the list, Manius Aquilius (the one
who subdued Asia), all notorious
bribe-takers, who had been acquitted by the judges, although ambassadors
sent to complain against them were still present, going around uttering
hateful accusations against them. The Senate was extremely ashamed of these
things and yielded to the law, and the people ratified it. In this way were
the courts of justice transferred from the Senate to the knights. It is said
that soon after the passage of this law Gracchus remarked that he had broken
the power of the Senate once for all. This saying of Gracchus has been even
more confirmed by experience in the course of events. This power of sitting
in judgment on all Romans and Italians, including the senators themselves,
in all matters as to property, civil rights, and banishment, exalted the
knights like rulers over them and put senators on the same level with
subjects. Moreover, as the knights voted in the election to sustain the
power of the tribunes, and obtained from them whatever they wanted in
return, they became more and more formidable to the senators. So it shortly
came about that the political mastery was turned upside down, the power
being in the hands of the knights, and the honor only remaining
with the Senate. The knights went so far that they
not only held power over the senators, but they openly flouted them beyond
their right. They also became addicted to bribe-taking, and having once
tasted these enormous gains, they indulged in them even more basely and
immoderately than the senators had done.
2 They suborned accusers against the rich and did away with
prosecutions for bribe-taking altogether, partly by concert of action and
partly by force and violence, so that the practice of this kind of
investigation became entirely obsolete. Thus the judiciary law gave rise to
another struggle of factions, which lasted a long time and was not less
baneful than the former ones.
[23]
Gracchus made long roads throughout Italy and thus put a multitude of contractors and artisans
under obligations to him and made them ready to do whatever he wished. He
proposed the founding of numerous colonies.3 He also called on the Latin allies to demand the full
rights of Roman citizenship, since the Senate could not with decency refuse
this privilege to their blood relations. To the other allies, who were not
allowed to vote in Roman elections, he sought to give the right of suffrage,
in order to have their help in the enactment of laws which he had in
contemplation. The Senate was very much alarmed at this, and it ordered the
consuls to give the following public notice, "Nobody who does not possess
the right of suffrage shall stay in the city or approach within forty stades
of it while voting is going on concerning these laws." The Senate also
persuaded Livius Drusus, another tribune, to interpose his veto against the
laws proposed by Gracchus, but not to tell the people his reasons for doing
so; for a tribune was not required to give reasons for his veto. In order to
conciliate the people they gave Drusus the privilege of founding twelve
colonies, and the plebeians were so much pleased with this that they began
to scoff at the laws proposed by Gracchus.
[24]
Having lost the favor of the rabble, Gracchus sailed for Africa in company with Fulvius Flaccus,
who, after his consulship, had been chosen tribune for the same reasons as
Gracchus himself. A colony had been voted to Africa on account of its reputed fertility, and these men
had been expressly chosen the founders of it in order to get them out of the
way for a while, so that the Senate might have a respite from demagogism.
They marked out a town for the colony on the place where Carthage had formerly stood,
disregarding the fact that Scipio, when he destroyed it, had devoted it with
curses to sheep-pasturage forever. They assigned 6000 colonists to this
place, instead of the smaller number fixed by law, in order further to curry
favor with the people thereby. When they returned to Rome they invited the 6000 from the whole
of Italy. The functionaries who
were still in Africa laying out the
city wrote home that wolves had pulled up and scattered the boundary marks
made by Gracchus and Fulvius, and the soothsayers considered this an ill
omen for the colony. So the Senate
summoned the comitia, in which it was
proposed to repeal
the law concerning this colony. When
Gracchus and Fulvius saw their failure in this matter they were furious, and
declared that the Senate had lied about the wolves. The boldest of the
plebeians joined them, carrying daggers, and proceeded to the Capitol, where
the assembly was to be held in reference to the colony.
[25]
Now the people were assembled, and Fulvius had begun speaking about the
business in hand, when Gracchus arrived at the Capitol attended by a
body-guard of his partisans. Disturbed by what he knew about the
extraordinary plans on foot he turned aside from the meeting-place of the
assembly, passed into the portico, and walked about waiting to see what
would happen. Just then a plebeian named Antyllus, who was sacrificing in
the portico, saw him in this disturbed state, seized him by the hand, either
because he had heard something or suspected something, or was moved to speak
to him for some other reason, and asked him to spare his country. Gracchus,
still more disturbed, and startled like one detected in a crime, gave the
man a piercing look. Then one of his party, although no signal had been
displayed or order given, inferred merely from the very sharp glance that
Gracchus cast upon Antyllus that the time for action had come, and thought
that he should do a favor to Gracchus by striking the first blow. So he drew
his dagger and slew Antyllus. A cry was raised, the dead body was seen in
the midst of the crowd, and all who were outside fled from the temple in
fear of a like fate. Gracchus went into the assembly desiring to exculpate
himself of the deed. Nobody would so much as listen to him. All turned away
from him as from one stained with blood. Gracchus and Flaccus were
nonplussed and, having lost the chance of accomplishing what they wished,
they hastened home, and their partisans with them. The rest of the crowd
occupied the forum throughout the night as though some calamity were
impending. Opimius, one of the consuls, who was staying in the city, ordered
an armed force to be stationed at the Capitol at daybreak, and sent heralds
to convoke the Senate. He took his own station in the temple of Castor and
Pollux in the centre of the city and there awaited events.
[26]
When these arrangements had been made the Senate summoned Gracchus and
Flaccus from their homes to the senate-house to defend themselves. But they
ran out armed toward the Aventine
hill, hoping that if they could seize it first the Senate would agree to
some terms with them. They ran through the city offering freedom to the
slaves, but none listened to them. With such forces as they had, however,
they occupied and fortified the temple of Diana, and sent Quintus, the son
of Flaccus, to the Senate seeking to come to an arrangement and to live in
peace. The Senate replied that they should lay down their arms, come to the
senate-house, tell what they wanted, or else send no more messengers. When
they sent Quintus a second time the consul Opimius arrested him, as being no
longer an ambassador after he had been warned, and at the same time sent an
armed force against the Gracchans. Gracchus fled across the river by the
Sublician bridge,4 with one slave, to a grove where he presented his throat
to the slave, as he was on the point of being arrested. Flaccus took refuge
in the workshop of an acquaintance. As his pursuers did not know which house
he was in they threatened to burn the whole row. The man who had given
shelter to the suppliant hesitated to point him out, but directed another
man to do so. Flaccus was seized and put to death. The heads of Gracchus and
Flaccus were carried to Opimius, and he gave their weight in gold to those
who brought them. The people plundered their houses. Opimius arrested their
fellow-conspirators, cast them into prison, and ordered that they should be
strangled. He allowed Quintus, the son of Flaccus, to choose his own mode of
death. After this a lustration was performed in behalf of the city for the
bloodshed, and the Senate ordered the building of a temple to Concord in the
forum.
