The Historians' History of the World 05

His first measures are marked by that which was the ruling passion of his life—a burning desire to avenge his brother’s death. Nasica was beyond his reach. But others, who had persecuted the friends and followers of Tiberius, were yet alive, and he inveighed against their cruel severity on all occasions. “Your ancestors,” he exclaimed, “suffered not their tribunes to be trampled down. But you—you let these men beat Tiberius to death, and murder his friends without a trial!”

Accordingly he brought a bill aimed at Popilius, who had been the head of the special commission appointed after the death of Tiberius. It declared any magistrate guilty of treason who had punished a citizen capitally without the consent of the people. Before it passed, Popilius left Rome; and the tribes, on the motion of Caius, banished him.

The young tribune next moved that any one who should have been deprived of office by a vote of the people should be incapable of holding any other office—an enactment evidently pointed at his brother’s old opponent Octavius. Fortunately for the honour of Gracchus, he was stopped in his career of vengeance by the intercession of his mother.

He now turned his thoughts to measures of a public nature, and brought forward a series of important bills, long known as the Sempronian laws, so sweeping in their design, as to show that he meditated no less than a revolution in the government of Rome. They may be divided into two classes: first, those which were intended to ameliorate the condition of the people; secondly, those which aimed at diminishing the power of the senate.

(1) Foremost in the first class we may place a bill for renewing and extending the agrarian law of his brother, which was coupled with a measure for planting new colonies in divers parts of Italy, and even in the provinces. The execution of this law was deferred till the next year.

(2) The second Sempronian law was the famous measure by which the state undertook to furnish corn at a low price to all Roman citizens. It provided that any one possessing the Roman franchise should be allowed to purchase grain from public stores at 6⅓ asses the modius, or about twenty-five asses the bushel; the losses being borne by the treasury.

Public measures for distributing corn in times of scarcity had long been familiar to Roman statesmen, and individuals had more than once sought popularity by doles to the poor. But now, for the first time, was a right established by law. The necessary results of such a measure must have been, and were, very fatal. Fifty years later, it was found necessary to limit the quantity sold to five modii (1¼ bushels) a month for each person; and forty thousand citizens were habitual purchasers. Successively demagogues reduced the price, till the profligate Clodius enacted that these 1¼ bushels should be given away without any payment. The dictator Cæsar found no fewer than 320,000 citizens in the monthly receipt of this dole. He reduced the number to 150,000, and Augustus fixed it at a maximum of 200,000 souls. Such was the mass of paupers saddled upon the imperial government by the unwise law of Gracchus.[79]

We now pass on to the measures which aimed at depriving the senate of the great administrative power which of late years it had engrossed.

(1) The first of these touched their judicial power. It has been mentioned that by the famous Calpurnian law (149 B.C.) all provincial magistrates accused of corrupt dealings in their government were to be tried before the prætor peregrinus as presiding judge, and a jury of senators. This was the first regular and permanent court of justice established at Rome. The principle of the Calpurnian law was gradually extended to other grave offences, and in all the superior courts the juries were composed of senators.

These courts had given little satisfaction. In all important cases of corruption, especially such as occurred in the provinces, the offenders were themselves senators. Some of the judges had been guilty of like offences, others hoped for opportunities of committing like offences; extortion was looked upon as a venial crime; prosecutions became a trial of party strength, and the culprit was usually absolved.

Gracchus now took the judicial power altogether out of the hands of the senate, and transferred it to a body of three hundred persons, to be chosen periodically from all citizens who possessed the equestrian rate of property. By this measure he smote the senate with a two-edged sword. For not only did he deprive it of the means of shielding its own members, but he also gave a political constitution to a rival order. The equestrian order, as a political body, entirely distinct from a mere military class, now first received distinct recognition.