The Historians' History of the World 05

It would seem that while the great Roman nobles pretended to detain vast tracts of public domain, they cultivated and even occupied only small portions. The conquered communities, though nominally dispossessed of their lands, were allowed, by abuse and connivance, to enjoy the use of a large part of them. But when the state should resume her rights over these estates, and actually redistribute them among her poorer citizens, the claims of the intruding natives would meet with no consideration; they would be dispossessed of them a second time, and absolutely excluded from their enjoyment. Accordingly, upon the first mooting of the Agrarian laws of Tiberius, all the Italians found themselves united by the same pressing interest, and they had no other alternative than either to defeat the passing of these laws by combining with the faction opposed to them in Rome itself, or, by obtaining the rights of the city, to acquire a legal title to share with the actual citizens. They hesitated and balanced as to their course; but upon the whole the wish to obtain Roman privileges and Roman exemptions, to escape the tyranny of Roman magistrates and enjoy the fruits of Roman conquest, combined with the legitimate ambition of their soldiers and statesmen to enter upon the noble field of Roman employments, determined them to press their claims to admission. For a hundred and fifty years the various races inhabiting the peninsula, distinct as they were in origin and language, had been arrayed together under the same discipline and a common yoke. The Romans had unconsciously formed their subjects into one nation, and the time was arrived when a common sentiment could arm the whole mighty mass in a combination against them. Italy had at last become a cry and a sentiment not less powerful than Rome herself.

The senate and the nobles, who retained the national feelings in all their strength, girded themselves to resist the threatened innovation; but in the time of the Gracchi, the mass of the commons was already adulterated by foreign admixtures, and felt far less keenly the old prejudices of race and country. Accordingly, when their favourite leaders, overlooking every ulterior consequence rather than justly estimating them, called the Latins and Italians to their standards, the Roman populace were easily persuaded to admit them to a share in their own struggle, and pledged themselves to advance together the respective interests of both. The allies themselves, under the able direction of the Gracchi, turned all their indignation against the aristocracy of the city, which they sought to make their own. They ascribed to the peculiar constitution of Rome the jealous and selfish opposition they encountered, and denounced republican government itself, on account of prejudices incident, in fact, to all conquering races. Monarchy indeed, it may be allowed, is generally more favourable than aristocracy to the surrender of national prejudices; and the Italians acted upon a genuine instinct in invoking kingly rule, and, while the tribunes allured them with the hope of citizenship, seducing the tribunes themselves with the prospect of the regal diadem. It was said that Saturninus was actually saluted king by his seditious followers; and nothing, perhaps, but the deep impression, so sedulously fostered by the nobles, of the traditional tyranny of the Tarquins, prevented the Roman commons from joining generally in the same cry. But the title of king was destined still to remain the popular bugbear for many centuries; and no man had yet arisen with genius to disguise a monarchy under the republican names of dictator or imperator.

The nobles attacked the tribunes with brute violence; the Roman commons and the Italian confederates they managed by craft and intrigue. At one time they sought to sow dissension between them, at another to outbid their own demagogues in the liberality of their offers, which they took care never to fulfil. They debauched the populace by largesses and amusements, and detached them from the cause of the allies. Alarmed at the progress Marius had made in opening the franchise to his Italian veterans, they contrived, at last, to throw a cloud over the brilliancy of his reputation, and availing themselves of the venal voices of the tribes, to recall Metellus from banishment and consummate another aristocratic reaction. In the insolence of their triumph they enjoined the consuls of the year 95 to expel from the city all the Italians who had domiciled themselves within the walls; and the law of Crassus and Scævola, which repeated the harsh enactments of eighty and ninety years before, convinced the injured subjects of the republic that their mistress had learned neither wisdom nor justice by the triumph of her arms and the extension of her empire.

[95-91 B.C.]