The Historians' History of the World 05

“He is usually extolled as a patriot who would not stir to humour a Roman rabble, but who, when downtrodden honest farmers, his comrades in the wars, appealed to him, at once stepped into the arena as their champion. In reality he was a reactionist who, when the inevitable results of those liberal ideas which had been broached in his own circle stared him in the face, seized the first available means of stifling them. The world had moved too fast for him. As censor, instead of beseeching the gods to increase the glory of the State, he begged them to preserve it. Brave as a man, he was a pusillanimous statesman. It was well for his reputation that he died just then. Without Sulla’s personal vices he might have played Sulla’s part as a politician, and his atrocities in Spain as well as his remark on the death of Tiberius Gracchus—words breathing the very essence of a narrow swordman’s nature—showed that from bloodshed at all events he would not have shrunk. It is hard to respect such a man in spite of all his good qualities. Fortune gave him the opportunity of playing a great part, and he shrank from it. When the crop sprang up which he had himself helped to sow, he blighted it. But because he was personally respectable, and because he held a middle course between contemporary parties, he has found favour with historians, who are too apt to forget that there is in politics, as in other things, a right course and a wrong, and that to attempt to walk along both at once proves a man to be a weak statesman, and does not prove him to be a great or good man.”c

CAIUS GRACCHUS AND HIS TIMES

[129-126 B.C.]

The sudden death of Scipio was followed by a calm. The turbulent Carbo vanishes from the scene, till nine years later he reappears as a champion of the violent oligarchical party. C. Gracchus was still living in retirement. Fulvius Flaccus was content to let the Agrarian law sleep in face of the portentous difficulties created by the measures of the triumvirs. Nor was there anything in foreign affairs to ruffle the general calm. But under this external tranquillity a leaven of agitation was at work. It was not to be expected that the new-born jealousy which had sprung up between the Romans on the one side and the Latins and Italians on the other, would fall asleep. Proposals, however, were set afloat for reconciling these two opposing interests. The Italians were led to hope that they might be made citizens of Rome, on condition that they should not resist the execution of the Agrarian law.

But the burgesses of Rome soon perceived that the admission of the Latins and Italians to the Roman franchise would reduce them to comparative insignificance. All the benefits now derived from the provinces by Romans exclusively must then be shared with a vastly increased number of citizens, and the profits as well as the power of a Roman must be materially diminished. In the year 126 B.C. a large number of Italian strangers flocked to Rome, eager for the promised boon. But by this time public opinion at Rome was so far changed that M. Junius Pennus, one of the tribunes, brought forward what we may call a severe alien-act, by which all strangers were compelled to quit Rome. The successors of Gracchus, however, remained constant to their new policy, and Caius himself was induced to speak in public for the second time. But he was unsuccessful. The law of Pennus was passed; and from this time may be dated that angry contest of feeling between the Romans and the Italians which after thirty-eight years found vent in a bloody war.

When Caius delivered this speech he was quæstor-elect for the next year. He was appointed to serve under the consul L. Aurelius Orestes, when this officer undertook to reduce the Sardinian mountaineers, who had been subjugated by the father of young Gracchus fifty years before. After the first year’s operations Orestes was at a loss for supplies and clothing; and from this difficulty he was relieved by his quæstor, who by the memory of his father and his own persuasive eloquence induced the Sardinian colonists to give voluntarily what the soldiers wanted. Shortly after, envoys arrived at Rome from Micipsa, son of Masinissa, offering, from respect (as they said) for the name of Gracchus, to send supplies of corn to Sardinia. The senate angrily dismissed the embassy. Orestes was directed to remain as proconsul in his province, and his quæstor was ordered to continue in office for a second year.

[126-123 B.C.]