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State of the Republic.

I. The age of disinterestedness and stoic virtues was passed; it had lasted nearly four hundred years, and during that period, the antagonism created by divergency of opinions and interests had never led to sanguinary conflicts. The patriotism of the aristocracy and the good sense of the people had prevented this fatal extremity; but, dating from the first years of the seventh century, everything had changed, and at every proposal of reform, or desire of power, nothing was seen but sedition, civil wars, massacres, and proscriptions.

“The Republic,” says Sallust, “owed its greatness to the wise policy of a small number of good citizens,”624 and we may add that its decline began the day on which their successors ceased to be worthy of those who had gone before them. In fact, most of those who, after the Gracchi, acted a great part, were so selfish and cruel that it is difficult to decide, in the midst of their excesses, which was the representative of the best cause.

As long as Carthage existed, like a man who is on his guard before a dangerous rival, Rome showed an anxiety to maintain the purity and wisdom of her ancient principles; but Carthage fallen, Greece subjugated, the kings of Asia vanquished, the Republic, no longer held by any salutary check, abandoned herself to the excesses of unlimited power.625

Sallust draws the following picture of the state of society: “When, freed from the fear of Carthage, the Romans had leisure to give themselves up to their dissensions, then there sprang up on all sides troubles, seditions, and at last civil wars. A small number of powerful men, whose favour most of the citizens sought by base means, exercised a veritable despotism under the imposing name, sometimes of the Senate, at other times of the People. The title of good and bad citizen was no longer the reward of what he did for or against his country, for all were equally corrupt; but the more any one was rich, and in a condition to do evil with impunity, provided he supported the present order of things, the more he passed for a man of worth. From this moment, the ancient manners no longer became corrupted gradually as before; but the depravation spread with the rapidity of a torrent, and youth was to such a degree infected by the poison of luxury and avarice, that there came a generation of people of which it was just to say, that they could neither have patrimony nor suffer others to have it.”626

The aggrandisement of the empire, frequent contact with strangers, the introduction of new principles in philosophy and religion, the immense riches brought into Italy by war and commerce, had all concurred in causing a profound deterioration of the national character. There had taken place an exchange of populations, ideas, and customs. On the one hand, the Romans, whether soldiers, traders, or farmers of the revenues, in spreading themselves abroad in crowds all over the world,627 had felt their cupidity increase amid the pomp and luxury of the East; on the other, the foreigners, and especially the Greeks, flowing into Italy, had brought, along with their perfection in the arts, contempt for the ancient institutions. The Romans had undergone an influence which may be compared with that which was exercised over the French of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries by Italy, then, it is true, superior in intelligence, but perverted in morals. The seduction of vice is irresistible when it presents itself under the form of elegance, wit, and knowledge. As in all epochs of transition, the moral ties were loosened, and the taste for luxury and the unbridled love of money had taken possession of all classes.

Two characteristic facts, distant from one another by one hundred and sixty-nine years, bear witness to the difference of morals at the two periods. Cineas, sent by Pyrrhus to Rome, with rich presents, to obtain peace, finds nobody open to corruption (474). Struck with the majesty and patriotism of the senators, he compares the Senate to an assembly of kings. Jugurtha, on the contrary, coming to Rome (643) to plead his cause, finds his resources quickly exhausted in buying everybody’s conscience, and, full of contempt for that great city, exclaims in leaving it: “Venal town, which would soon perish if it could find a purchaser!”628

Society, indeed, was placed, by noteworthy changes, in new conditions: for the populace of the towns had increased, while the agricultural population had diminished; agriculture had become profoundly modified; the great landed properties had absorbed the little; the number of proletaries and freedmen had increased, and the slaves had taken the place of free labour. The military service was no longer considered by the nobles as the first honour and the first duty. Religion, that fundamental basis of the Republic, had lost its prestige. And, lastly, the allies were weary of contributing to the greatness of the empire, without participating in the rights of Roman citizens.629 There were, as we have seen, two peoples, quite distinct: the people of the allies and subjects, and the people of Rome. The allies were always in a state of inferiority; their contingents, more considerable than those of the metropolis, received only half the pay of the latter, and were subjected to bodily chastisement from which the soldiers of the legions were exempted. Even in the triumphs, their cohorts, by way of humiliation, followed, in the last rank and in silence, the chariot of the victor. It was natural then that, penetrated with the feelings of their own dignity and the services they had rendered, they should aspire to be treated as equals. The Roman people, properly so named, occupying a limited territory, from Cære to Cumæ, preserved all the pride of a privileged class. It was composed of from about three to four hundred thousand citizens,630 divided into thirty five tribes, of which four only belonged to the town, and the others to the country. In these last, it is true, had been inscribed the inhabitants of the colonies and of several towns of Italy, but the great majority of the Italiotes were deprived of political rights, and at the very gates of Rome there still remained disinherited cities, such as Tibur, Præneste, Signia, and Norba.631

The richest citizens, in sharing among them the public domain, composed of about two-thirds of the totality of the conquered territory, had finished by getting nearly the whole into their own hands, either by purchase from the small proprietors, or by forcibly expelling them; and this occurred even beyond the frontiers of Italy.632 At a later time, when the Republic, mistress of the basin of the Mediterranean, received, either under the name of contribution, or by exchange, an immense quantity of corn from the most fertile countries, the cultivation of wheat was neglected in Italy, and the fields were converted into pastures and sumptuous parks. Meadows, indeed, which required fewer hands, would naturally be preferred by the great proprietors. Not only did the vast domains, latifundia, appertain to a small number, but the knights had monopolised all the elements of riches of the country. Many had retired from the ranks of the cavalry to become farmers-general (publicani), bankers, and, almost alone, merchants. Formed, over the whole face of the empire, into financial companies, they worked the provinces, and formed a veritable money aristocracy, whose importance was continually increasing, and which, in the political struggles, made the balance incline to the side where it threw its influence.

Thus, not only was the wealth of the country in the hands of the patrician and plebeian nobility, but the free men diminished incessantly in numbers in the rural districts. If we believe Plutarch,633 there were no longer in Etruria, in 620, any but foreigners for tillers of the soil and herdsmen, and everywhere slaves had multiplied to such a degree, that, in Sicily alone, 200,000 took part in the revolt of 619.634 In 650, the King of Bithynia declared himself unable to furnish a military contingent, because all the young adults had been carried away for slaves by Roman collectors.635 In the great market of Delos, 10,000 slaves were sold and embarked in one day for Italy.636

The excessive number of slaves was then a danger to society and a cause of weakness to the State;637 and there was the same inconvenience in regard to the freedmen. Citizens since the time of Servius Tullius, but without right of suffrage; free in fact, but remaining generally attached to their old masters; physicians, artists, grammarians, they were incapable, they and their children, of becoming senators, or of forming part of the college of pontiffs, or of marrying a free woman, or of serving in the legions, unless in case of extreme danger. Sometimes admitted into the Roman communalty, sometimes rejected; veritable mulattoes of ancient times, they participated in two natures, and bore always the stigma of their origin.638 Confined to the urban tribes, they had, with the proletaries, augmented that part of the population of Rome for which the conqueror of Carthage and Numantia often showed a veritable disdain: “Silence!” he shouted one day, “you whom Italy does not acknowledge for her children;” and as the noise still continued, he proceeded, “Those whom I caused to be brought here in chains will not frighten me because to-day their bonds have been broken.”639 When the people of the town assembled in the Forum without the presence of the rural tribes, which were more independent, they were open to all seductions, and to the most powerful of these—the money of the candidates and the distributions of wheat at a reduced price. They were also influenced by the mob of those deprived of political rights, when, crowding the public place, as at the English hustings, they sought, by their cries and gestures, to act on the minds of the citizens.

On another hand, proud of the deeds of their ancestors, the principal families, in possession of the soil and of the power, desired to preserve this double advantage without being obliged to show themselves worthy of it; they seemed to disdain the severe education which had made them capable of filling all offices,640 so that it might be said that there existed then at Rome an aristocracy without nobility, and a democracy without people.

There were, then, injustices to redress, exigencies to satisfy, and abuses to repress; for neither the sumptuary laws, nor those against solicitation, nor the measures against the freedmen, were sufficient to cure the diseases of society. It was necessary, as in the time of Licinius Stolo (378), to have recourse to energetic measures—to give more stability to power, confer the right of city on the peoples of Italy, diminish the number of slaves, revise the titles to landed property, distribute to the people the lands illegally acquired, and thus give a new existence to the agricultural class.

All the men of eminence saw the evil and sought the remedy. Caius Lælius, among others, the friend of Scipio Æmilianus, and probably at his instigation, entertained the thought of proposing salutary reforms, but was prevented by the fear of raising troubles.641

Tiberius Gracchus (621).

II. Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus alone dared to take a courageous initiative. Illustrious by birth, remarkable for his physical advantages as well as eloquence,642 he was son of the Gracchus who was twice consul, and of Cornelia, the daughter of Scipio Africanus.643 At the age of eighteen, Tiberius had been present, under the orders of his brother-in-law, Scipio Æmilianus, at the ruin of Carthage, and was the first to mount to the assault.644 Questor of the Consul Mancinus in Spain, he had contributed to the treaty of Numantia. Animated with the love of virtue,645 far from being dazzled by the splendour of the moment, he foresaw the dangers of the future, and wished to prevent them while there was still time. At the moment of his elevation to the tribuneship, in 621, he took up again, with the approval of men of eminence and philosophers of most distinction the project which had been entertained by Scipio Æmilianus646 to distribute the public domain among the poor.647 The people themselves demanded the concession with great outcries, and the walls of Rome were daily covered with inscriptions calling for it.648

Tiberius, in a speech to the people, pointed out eloquently all the germs of destruction in the Roman power, and traced the picture of the deplorable condition of the citizens spread over the territory of Italy without an asylum in which to repose their bodies enfeebled by war, after they had shed their blood for their country. He cited revolting examples of the arbitrary conduct of certain magistrates, who had caused innocent men to be put to death on the most futile pretexts.649

He then spoke with contempt of the slaves, of that restless, uncertain class, invading the rural districts, useless for the recruitment of the armies, dangerous to society, as the last insurrection in Sicily clearly proved. He ended by proposing a law, which was simply a reproduction of that of Licinius Stolo, that had fallen into disuse. Its object was to withdraw from the nobility a portion of the lands of the domain which they had unjustly seized. No landholder should retain more than five hundred jugera for himself and two hundred and fifty for each of his sons. These lands should belong to them for ever; the part confiscated should be divided into lots of thirty jugera and farmed hereditarily, either to Roman citizens, or to Italiote auxiliaries, on condition of a small rent to the treasury, and with an express prohibition to alienate. The proprietors were to be indemnified for the part of their lands which they so lost. This project, which all the old writers judged to be just and moderate, raised a tempest among the aristocracy. The Senate rejected it, and, when the people were on the point of adopting it, the tribune Octavius, gained over by the rich citizens,650 opposed to it his inflexible veto. Suddenly interrupted in his designs, Tiberius embraced the resolution, as bold as it was contrary to the laws, of obtaining a vote of the tribes to depose the tribune. These having pronounced accordingly, the new law was published, and three triumvirs appointed for carrying it into execution: they were, Tiberius, his brother Caius, and his father-in-law Appius Claudius. Upon another proposition, he obtained a decision that the money left by the King of Pergamus to the Roman people should be employed for the expenses of establishing those who were to receive the lands.651

The agrarian law had only passed by the assistance of the votes of the country tribes.652 Nevertheless, the popular party, in its enthusiasm, carried Tiberius home in triumph, calling him not only the benefactor of one city, but the father of all the peoples of Italy.

The possessors of the great domains, struck in their dearest interests, were far from sharing in this joy. Not satisfied with having attempted to carry off the urns at the time the law was voted, they plotted the assassination of Tiberius.653 In fact, as Machiavelli says: “Men value riches even more than honours, and the obstinacy of the Roman aristocracy in defending its possessions constrained the people to have recourse to extremities.”654

The chiefs of the opposition, great landholders, such as the tribune Octavius and Scipio Nasica, attacked in every possible way the author of the law which despoiled them, and one day the senator Pompeius went so far as to say that the King of Pergamus had sent Tiberius a robe of purple and the diadem, signs of the tribune’s future royalty.655 The latter, in self-defence, had recourse to proposals inspired rather by the desire of a vain popularity than the general interest. The struggle became daily more and more embittered, and his friends persuaded him to secure his re-election as tribune, in order that the inviolability of his office might afford a refuge against the attacks of his enemies. The people was convoked; but the most substantial support of Tiberius failed him: the country people, retained by the harvest, did not obey the call.656

Tiberius only sought a reform, and, unknowingly, he had commenced a revolution. But to accomplish this he did not possess all the necessary qualities. A singular mixture of gentleness and audacity, he unchained the tempest, but dared not launch the thunderbolt. Surrounded by his adherents, he walked to the comitia with more appearance of resignation than assurance. The tribes, assembled in the Capitol, were beginning to give their votes, when the senator Fulvius Flaccus came to warn Tiberius that, in the meeting of the Senate, the rich, surrounded by their slaves, had resolved on his destruction. This information produced a considerable agitation round the tribune, and those at a distance demanding the cause of the tumult, Tiberius raised his hand to his head to explain by signs the danger which threatened him.657 Then his enemies hurried to the Senate, and, giving their own interpretation to his gesture, denounced him as aiming at the kingly power. The Senate, preceded by the sovereign pontiff, Scipio Nasica, repaired to the Capitol. The mob of Tiberius was dispersed, and he himself was slain, with three hundred of his friends, near the gate of the sacred inclosure. All his partisans were hunted out, and underwent the same fate, and among others Diophanes the rhetorician.

The man had succumbed, but the cause remained standing, and public opinion forced the Senate to discontinue its opposition to the execution of the agrarian law, to substitute for Tiberius, as commissioner for the partition of lands, Publius Crassus, an ally of the Gracchi; the people commiserated the fate of the victims and cursed the murderers. Scipio Nasica gained nothing by his triumph; to withdraw him from the general resentment he was sent to Asia, where he died miserably.

The execution of the law encountered, nevertheless, many obstacles. The limits of the ager publicus had never been well defined; few title-deeds existed, and those which could be produced were often unintelligible. The value of this property, too, had changed prodigiously. It was necessary to indemnify those who had cleared uncultivated grounds or made improvements. Most of the lots contained religious buildings and sepulchres. According to the antique notions, it was a sacrilege to give them any other destination. The possessors of the ager publicus, supported by the Senate and the equestrian order, made the most of all these difficulties. The Italiotes showed no less ardour in protesting against the partition of the lands, knowing well that it would be less favourable to them than to the Romans.

The struggles which had preceded had so excited men’s passions, that each party, as the opportunity occurred, presented laws the most opposite to each other. At one time, on the motion of the tribune Junius Pennus, it is a question of expelling all foreigners from Rome (628), in order to deprive the party of the people of auxiliaries; at another, on that of M. Fulvius, the right of city is claimed in favour of the Italiotes (629). This demand leads to disturbances: it is rejected, and the Senate, to rid itself of Fulvius, sends him against the Salluvii, who were threatening Massilia. But already the allies themselves, impatient at seeing their rights incessantly despised, were attempting to secure them by force, and the Latin colony of Fregellæ revolts first; but it is soon destroyed utterly by the prætor M. Opimius (629). The rigour of this act of repression was calculated to intimidate the other towns; but there are questions which must be resolved, and cannot be put down. The cause which has been vanquished ten years is on the point of finding in the brother of Tiberius Gracchus a new champion.

Caius Gracchus (631).

III. Caius Gracchus, indeed, nourished in his heart, as a sacred deposit, the ideas of his brother and the desire to revenge him. After serving in twelve campaigns, he returned to Rome to solicit the tribuneship. On his arrival, the nobles trembled, and, to combat his ascendency, they accused him of being concerned in the insurrection of Fregellæ; but his name brought him numerous sympathies. On the day of his election, a vast crowd of citizens arrived in Rome from all parts of Italy, and so great was the confluence that the Campus Martius could not hold them; and many gave their votes even from the roofs.658 Invested with the tribunitian power, Gracchus made use of it to submit to the sanction of the people several laws; some directed merely against the enemies of his brother;659 others, of great political meaning, which require more particular notice.

First, the importance of the tribunes was increased by the faculty of being re-elected indefinitely,660 which tended to give a character of permanence to functions which were already so preponderant. Next, the law frumentaria, by turn carried into effect and abandoned,661 gained him adherents by his granting without distinction, to all the poor citizens, the monthly distribution of a certain quantity of wheat; and for this purpose vast public granaries were constructed.662 The shortening of the time of service of the soldiers,663 the prohibition to enrol them under seventeen years of age, and the payment by the treasury of their equipment, which was previously deducted from their pay, gained him the favour of the army. The establishment of new tolls (portoria) augmented the resources of the State; new colonies were founded,664 not only in Italy, but in the possessions out of the peninsula.665 The agrarian law, which was connected with the establishment of these colonies, was confirmed, probably with the view of restoring to the commissioners charged with its execution their judicial powers, which had fallen into disuse.666 Long and wide roads, starting from Rome, placed the metropolis in easy communication with the different countries of Italy.667

Down to this time, the appointments to the provinces had taken place after the consular elections, which allowed the Senate to distribute the great commands nearly according to its own convenience; it was now arranged, in order to defeat the calculations of ambition and cupidity, that the Senate should assign, before the election of the consuls, the provinces which they should administrate.668 To elevate the title of Roman citizen, the dispositions of the law Porcia were put in force again, and it was forbidden not only to pronounce capital punishment669 on a Roman citizen, except in case of high treason (perduellio), but even for this offence to apply it without the ratification of the people. It was equivalent to repealing the law of provocation, the principle of which had been inscribed in the laws of the Twelve Tables.

C. Gracchus attempted still more in the cause of equality. He proposed to confer the right of city on the allies who enjoyed the Latin law, and even to extend this benefit to all the inhabitants of Italy.670 He wished that in the comitia all classes should be admitted without distinction to draw lots for the century called prærogativa, or which had precedency in voting;671 this “prerogative” had in fact a great influence, because the suffrage of the first voters was regarded as a divine presage; but these propositions were rejected. Desirous of diminishing the power of the Senate, Gracchus resolved to oppose to it the knights, whose importance he increased by new attributes. He caused a law to be passed which authorised the censor to let to farm, in Asia, the lands taken from the inhabitants of the conquered towns.672 The knights then took in farm the rents and tithes of those countries, of which the soil belonged of right to the Roman people;673 the old proprietors were reduced to the condition of simple tenants. Finally, Caius gave the knights a share in the judiciary powers, exercised exclusively by the Senate, the venality of which had excited public contempt.674 Three hundred knights were joined with three hundred senators, and the cognisance of all actions at law thus devolved upon six hundred judges.675 These measures gained for him the good-will of an order which, hostile hitherto to the popular party, had contributed to the failure of the projects of Tiberius Gracchus.

The tribune’s success was immense; his popularity became so great that the people surrendered to him the right of naming the three hundred knights among whom the judges were to be chosen, and his simple recommendation was enough to secure the election of Fannius, one of his partisans, to the consulship. Desiring further to show his spirit of justice towards the provinces, he sent back to Spain the wheat arbitrarily carried away from the inhabitants by the proprætor Fabius. The tribunes had thus, at that epoch, a veritable omnipotence: they had charge of the great works; disposed of the public revenues; dictated, so to say, the election of the consuls; controlled the acts of the governors of provinces; proposed the laws, and saw to their execution.

These measures taken together, from the circumstance that they were favourable to a great number of interests, calmed for some time the ardour of the opposition, and reduced it to silence. Even the Senate became reconciled in appearance with Caius Gracchus; but under the surface the feeling of hatred still existed, and another tribune was raised up against him, Livius Drusus, whose mission was to propose measures destined to restore to the Senate the affection of the people. C. Gracchus had designed that the allies enjoying Latin rights should be admitted to the right of city. Drusus caused it to be declared that, like the Roman citizens, they should no longer be subject to be beaten with rods. According to the law of the Gracchi, the lands distributed to the poor citizens were burdened with a small rent for the profit of the public treasury; Drusus freed them from it.676 In rivalry to the agrarian law, he obtained the creation of twelve colonies of three thousand citizens each. Lastly, it was thought necessary to remove Caius Gracchus himself out of the way, by appointing him to lead to Carthage, to raise it from its ruins, the colony of six thousand individuals, taken from all parts of Italy,677 of which he had obtained the establishment.

During his absence, things took an entirely new turn. If, on the one hand, the measures of Drusus had satisfied a part of the people, on the other, Fulvius, the friend of Caius, a man of excessive zeal, compromised his cause by dangerous exaggerations. Opimius, the bitter enemy of the Gracchi, offered himself for the consulship. Informed of these different intrigues, Caius returned suddenly to Rome to solicit a third renewal of the tribuneship. He failed, while Opimius, elected consul, with the prospect of combating a party so redoubtable to the nobles, caused all citizens who were not Romans to be banished from the town, and, under a religious pretext, attempted to obtain the revocation of the decree relating to the colony of Carthage. When the day of deliberation arrived, two parties occupied the Capitol at an early hour.

The Senate, in consideration of the gravity of the circumstances and in the interest of the public safety, invested the consul with extraordinary powers, declaring that it was necessary to exterminate tyrants—a treacherous qualification always employed against the defenders of the people, and, in order to make more sure of triumph, they had recourse to foreign troops. The Consul Opimius, at the head of a body of Cretan archers, easily put to the rout a tumultuous assembly. Caius took flight, and, finding himself pursued, slew himself. Fulvius underwent a similar fate. The head of the tribune was carried in triumph. Three thousand men were thrown into prison and strangled. The agrarian laws and the emancipation of Italy ceased, for some time, to torment the Senate.

Such was the fate of the Gracchi, two men who had at heart to reform the laws of their country, and who fell victims to selfish interests and prejudices still too powerful. “They perished,” says Appian,678 “because they employed violence in the execution of an excellent measure.”679 In fact, in a State where legal forms had been respected for four hundred years, it was necessary either to observe them faithfully, or to have an army at command.

Yet the work of the Gracchi did not die with them. Several of their laws continued long to subsist. The agrarian law was executed in part, inasmuch as, at a subsequent period, the nobles bought back the portions of lands which had been taken from them,680 and its effects were only destroyed at the end of fifteen years. Implicated in the acts of corruption imputed to Jugurtha, of which we shall soon have to speak, the Consul Opimius had the same fate as Scipio Nasica, and a no less miserable end. It is curious to see two men, each vanquisher of a sedition, terminate their lives in a foreign land, exposed to the hatred and contempt of their fellow-citizens. Yet the reason is natural: they combated with arms ideas which arms could not destroy. When, in the midst of general prosperity, dangerous Utopias spring up, without root in the country, the slightest employment of force extinguishes them; but, on the contrary, when society, deeply tormented by real and imperious needs, requires reform, the success of the most violent repression is but momentaneous: the ideas repressed appear again incessantly, and, like the fabled hydra, for one head struck off a hundred others grow up in its place.

War of Jugurtha (637).

IV. An arrogant oligarchy had triumphed in Rome over the popular party: will it have at least the energy to raise again the honour of the Roman name abroad? Such will not be the case: events, of which Africa is on the point of becoming the theatre, will show the baseness of these men who sought to govern the world by repudiating the virtues of their ancestors.

Jugurtha, natural son of Mastanabal, king of Numidia, by a concubine, had distinguished himself in the Roman legions at the siege of Numantia. Reckoning on the favour he enjoyed at Rome, he had resolved to seize the inheritance of Micipsa, to the prejudice of the two legitimate children, Hiempsal and Adherbal. The first was murdered by his orders, and, in spite of this crime, Jugurtha had succeeded in corrupting the Roman commissioners charged with the task of dividing the kingdom between him and Adherbal, and in obtaining from them the larger part. But soon master of the whole country by force of arms, he put Adherbal to death also. The Senate sent against Jugurtha the consul Bestia Calpurnius, who, soon bribed as the commissioners had been, concluded a disgraceful peace. So many infamous deeds could not remain in the shade. The consul, on his return, was attacked by C. Memmius, who, in forcing Jugurtha to come to Rome to give an account of himself, seized the occasion of reminding his hearers of the grievances of the people and of the scandalous conduct of the nobles, in the following words:—

“After the assassination of Tiberius Gracchus, who, according to the nobles, aspired to the kingly power, the Roman people saw itself exposed to their vigorous persecutions. Similarly, after the murder of Caius Gracchus and Marcus Fulvius, how many people of your order have they not caused to be imprisoned? At either of these epochs it was not the law, but their caprice alone, which put an end to the massacres. Moreover, I acknowledge that to restore to the people their rights, is to aspire to the kingly power; and we must regard as legitimate all vengeance obtained by the blood of the citizens. … In these last years you groaned in secret to see the public treasure wasted, the kings and free people made the tributaries of a few nobles—of those who alone are in possession of splendid dignities and great riches. Nevertheless, it is too little for them to be able with impunity to commit such crimes; they have finished by delivering to the enemies of the State your laws, the dignity of your empire, and all that is sacred in the eyes of gods and men. … But who are they, then, those who have invaded the Republic? Villains covered with blood, devoured by a monstrous cupidity, the most criminal, and at the same time the most arrogant, of men. For them, good faith, honour, religion, and virtue, are, like vice, objects of traffic. Some have put to death tribunes of the people; others have commenced unjust proceedings against you; most of them have shed your blood; and these excesses are their safeguard: the further they have gone in the course of their crimes, the more they feel themselves in safety. … Ah! could you count upon a sincere reconciliation with them? They seek to rule over you, you seek to be free; it is their will to oppress you, you resist oppression; lastly, they treat your allies as enemies, your enemies as allies.”681

He then reminded his audience of all Jugurtha’s crimes. The latter rose to justify himself; but the tribune C. Bæbius, with whom he was in league, ordered the king to keep silence. The Numidian was on the point of gathering the fruit of such an accumulation of corruptions, when, having caused a dangerous rival, Massiva, the grandson of Masinissa, to be assassinated at Rome, he became the object of public reprobation, and was compelled to return to Africa. War then re-commences; the consul Albinus lets it drag on in length. Recalled to Rome to hold the comitia, he entrusts the command to his brother, the proprætor Aulus, whose army, soon seduced by Jugurtha, lets itself be surrounded, and is under the necessity of making a dishonourable capitulation. The indignation at Rome is at its height. On the proposal of a tribune, an inquiry is opened against all the presumed accomplices in the misdeeds of Jugurtha; they were punished, and, as often happens under such circumstances, the vengeance of the people passed the limits of justice. At last, after warm debates, an honourable man is chosen, Metellus, belonging to the faction of the nobles, and he is charged with the war in Africa. Public opinion, by forcing the Senate to punish corruption, had triumphed over bad passions; and “it was the first time,” says Sallust, “that the people put a bridle on the tyrannical pride of the nobility.”682

Marius (647).

V. The Gracchi had made themselves, so to say, the civil champions of the popular cause: Marius became its stern soldier. Born of an obscure family, bred in camps, having arrived by his courage at high grades, he had the roughness and the ambition of the class which feels itself oppressed. A great captain, but a partisan in spirit, naturally inclined to good and to justice, he became, towards the end of his life, through love of power, cruel and inexorable.683

After having distinguished himself at the siege of Numantia, he was elected tribune of the people, and displayed in that office a great impartiality.684 It was the first step of his fortune. Having become the lieutenant of Metellus, in the war against Jugurtha he sought to supplant his general; and, at a later period, succeeded in allying himself to an illustrious family by marrying Julia, paternal aunt of the great Cæsar. Guided by his instinct or intelligence, he had learnt that beneath the official people there existed a people of proletaries and of allies which demanded a consideration in the State.

Having reached the consulship through his high military reputation, backed by intrigues, he was charged with the war of Numidia, and, before his departure, expressed with energy, in an address to the people, the rancours and principles of the democratic party of that time.

“You have charged me,” he said, “with the war against Jugurtha; the nobility is irritated at your choice: but why do you not change your decree, by going to seek for this expedition a man among that crowd of nobles, of old lineage, who counts many ancestors, but not a single campaign? … It is true that he would have to take among the people an adviser who could teach him his business. With these proud patricians compare Marius, a new man. What they have heard related by others, what they have read of, I have seen in part, I have in part done. … They reproach me with the obscurity of my birth and fortune; I reproach them with their cowardice and personal infamy. Nature, our common mother, has made all men equal, and the bravest is the most noble. … If they think they are justified in despising me, let them also despise their ancestors, ennobled like me by their personal merits. … And is it not more worthy to be oneself the author of his name than to degrade that which has been transmitted to you?

“I cannot, to justify your confidence, make a display of images, nor boast of the triumphs or consulships of my ancestors; but I can produce, if necessary, javelins, a standard, the trappings of war, twenty other military gifts, besides the scars which furrow my breast. These are my images, these my nobility, not left by inheritance, but won for myself by great personal labours and perils.”685

After this oration, in which is revealed the legitimate ardour of those who, in all aristocratic countries, demand equality, Marius, contrary to the ancient system, enrolled more proletaries than citizens. The veterans also crowded under his standards. He conducted the war of Africa with skill; but he was robbed of part of his glory by his questor, P. Cornelius Sylla. This man, called soon afterwards to play so great a part, sprung from an illustrious patrician family, ambitious, ardent, full of boldness and confidence in himself, recoiled before no obstacle. The successes, which cost so many efforts to Marius, seemed to come of themselves to Sylla. Marius defeated the Numidian prince, but, by an adventurous act of boldness, Sylla received his submission, and ended the war. From that time began, between the proconsul and his young questor, a rivalry which, in time, was changed into violent hatred. They became, one, the champion of the democracy; the other, the hope of the oligarchic faction. So the Senate extolled beyond measure Metellus and Sylla, in order that the people should not consider Marius as the first of the generals.686 The gravity of events soon baffled this manœuvre.

While Marius was concluding the war with Jugurtha, a great danger threatened Italy. Since 641, an immense migration of barbarians had moved through Illyria into Cisalpine Gaul, and had defeated, at Noreia (in Carniola) the consul Papirius Carbo. They were the Cimbri, and all their peculiarities, manners, language, habits of pillage, and adventures, attested their relationship to the Gauls.687 In their passage through Rhætia into the country of the Helvetii, they dragged with them different peoples, and during some years devastated Gaul; returned in 645 to the neighbourhood of the Roman province, they demanded of the Republic lands to settle in. The consular army sent to meet them was defeated, and they invaded the province itself. The Tigurini (647), a people of Helvetia, issuing from their mountains, slew the consul L. Cassius, and made his army pass under the yoke. It was only a prelude to greater disasters. A third invasion of the Cimbri, followed by two new defeats in 649, on the banks of the Rhine, excites the keenest apprehensions, and points to Marius as the only man capable of saving Italy; the nobles, moreover, in presence of this great danger, sought no longer to seize the power.688 Marius was, contrary to the law, named a second time consul, in 650, and charged with the war in Gaul.

This great captain laboured during several years to restore military discipline, practise his troops, and familiarise them with their new enemies, whose aspect filled them with terror. Marius, considered indispensable, was re-elected from year to year; from 650 to 654, he was five times elected consul, and beat the Cimbri, united with the Ambrones and Teutones, near Aquæ Sextiæ (Aix), re-passed into Italy, and exterminated, near Vercellæ, the Cimbri who had escaped from the last battle and those whom the Celtiberians had driven back from Spain. These immense butcheries, these massacres of whole peoples, removed for some time the barbarians from the frontiers of the Republic.

Consul for the sixth time (654), the saviour of Rome and Italy, by a generous deference, would not triumph without his colleague Catulus,689 and did not hesitate to exceed his powers in granting to two auxiliary cohorts of Cameria, who had distinguished themselves, the rights of city.690 But his glory was obscured by culpable intrigues. Associated with the most turbulent chiefs of the democratic party, he excited them to revolt, and sacrificed them as soon as he saw that they could not succeed. When governments repulse the legitimate wishes of the people and true ideas, then factious men seize on them as a powerful arm to serve their passions and personal interests; the Senate having rejected all the proposals of reform, those who sought to raise disorders found in them a pretext and support in their perverse projects. L. Appuleius Saturninus, one of Marius’s creatures, and Glaucia, a fellow of loose manners, were guilty of incredible violences. The first revived the agrarian laws of the Gracchi, and went beyond them in proposing the partition of the lands taken from the Cimbri; a measure which he sought to impose by terror and murder. In the troubles which broke out at the election of the consuls for 655, the urban tribes came to blows with the country tribes. In the midst of the tumult, Saturninus, followed by a troop of desperadoes, made himself master of the Capitol, and fortified himself in it. Charged, in his quality of consul, with the repression of sedition, Marius first favoured it by an intentional inaction; then, seeing all good citizens run to arms, and the factious without support, even deserted by the urban plebeians, he placed himself at the head of some troops, and occupied the avenues to the Capitol. From the first moment of the attack, the rebels threw down their arms and demanded quarter. Marius left them to be massacred by the people, as though he had wished that the secret of the sedition might die with them.

The question of Italian emancipation was not foreign to the revolt of Saturninus. It is certain that the claims of the Italiotes, rejected after the death of C. Gracchus, and then adjourned at the approach of the Cimbri, who threatened all the peninsula with one common catastrophe, were renewed with more earnestness than ever after the defeat of the barbarians. The earnestness of the allies to come to the succour of Italy, the courage which they had shown in the battle-fields of Aquæ Sextiæ and Vercellæ, gave them new claims to become Romans. Yet, if some prudent politicians believed that the time was arrived for yielding to the wishes of the Italiotes, a numerous and powerful party revolted at the idea of such a concession. The more the privileges of the citizens became extended, the more the Roman pride resisted the thought of having sharers in them. M. Livius Drusus (663), tribune of the people, son of the Drusus already mentioned, having under his command in Rome an immense body of clients, the acknowledged patron of all the Italiote cities, dared to attempt this salutary reform, and had nearly carried it by force of party. He was not ignorant that there was already in existence a formidable confederacy of the peoples of the south and east of Italy, and that more than once their chiefs had meditated a general insurrection. Drusus, trusting in their projects, had had the art to restrain them and to obtain from them the promise of a blind obedience. The success of the tribune seemed certain. The people were gained over by distributions of wheat and concessions of lands; the Senate, intimidated, appeared to have become powerless, when, a few days before the vote of the tribes, Drusus was assassinated. All Italy accused the senators of this crime, and war became inevitable.

The obstinate refusal of the Romans to share with the Italiotes all their political rights, had been long a cause of political agitation. More than two hundred years before, the war of the Latins and the revolt of the inhabitants of Campania, after the battle of Cannæ, had no other motives. About the same time (536), Spurius Carvilius proposed to admit into the Senate two senators taken from each people in Latium. “The assembly,” says Livy,691 “burst into a murmur of indignation, and Manlius, raising his voice over the others, declared that there existed still a descendant of that consul who once, in the Capitol, threatened to kill with his own hand the first Latin he should see in the curia;” a striking proof of this secular resistance of the Roman aristocracy to everything which might threaten its supremacy. But, after this epoch, the ideas of equality had assumed a power which it was impossible to mistake.

Wars of the Allies (663).

VI. This civil war, which was called the War of Allies,692 showed once more the impotence of material force against the legitimate aspirations of peoples, and it covered the country with blood and ruins. Three hundred thousand citizens, the choice of the nation, perished on the field of battle.693 Rome had the superiority, it is true, and yet it was the cause of the vanquished which triumphed, since, after the war, the only object of which was the assertion of the rights of citizenship, these rights were granted to most of the peoples of Italy. Sylla subsequently restricted them, and we may be convinced, by examining the different censuses, that the entire emancipation was only accomplished under Cæsar.694

The revolt burst out fortuitously before the day fixed. It was provoked by the violence of a Roman magistrate, who was massacred by the inhabitants of Asculum; but all was ready for an insurrection, which was not long before it became general. The allies had a secret government, chiefs appointed, and an army organised. At the head of the peoples confederated against Rome were distinguished the Marsi and the Samnites; the first excited rather by a feeling of national pride than by the memory of injuries to be revenged; the second, on the contrary, by the hatred which they had vowed against the Romans during long struggles for their independence—struggles renewed on the invasion of Hannibal. Both shared the honour of the supreme command. It appears, moreover, that the system of government adopted by the confederation was a copy of the Roman institutions. To substitute Italy for Rome, and to replace the denomination of a single town by that of a great people, was the avowed aim of the new league. A Senate was named, or rather a Diet, in which each city had its representatives; they elected two consuls, Q. Pompædius Silo, a Marsian, and C. Papius Mutilus, a Samnite. For their capital, they chose Corfinium, the name of which was changed to that of Italia, or Vitelia, which, in the Oscan language, spoken by a part of the peoples of Southern Italy, had the same signification.695

The allies were wanting neither in skilful generals nor in brave and experienced soldiers; in the two camps, the same arms, the same discipline. The war, commenced at the end of the year 663, was pursued on both sides with the utmost animosity. It extended through Central Italy, from the north to the south, from Firmum (Fermo) to Grumentum, in Lucania, and from east to west from Cannæ to the Liris. The battles were sanguinary, and often indecisive, and, on both sides, the losses were so considerable, that it soon became necessary to enrol the freedmen, and even the slaves.

The allies obtained at first brilliant successes. Marius had the glory of arresting their progress, although he had only troops demoralised by reverses. Fortune, this time again, served Sylla better; conqueror wherever he appeared, he sullied his exploits by horrible cruelties to the Samnites, whom he seemed to have undertaken to destroy rather than to subdue. The Senate displayed more humanity, or more policy, in granting spontaneously the right of Roman city to all the allies who remained faithful to the Republic, and in promising it to all those who should lay down their arms. It treated in the same manner the Cisalpine Gauls; as to their neighbours on the left bank of the Po, it conferred upon them the right of Latium. This wise measure divided the confederates;696 the greater part submitted. The Samnites, almost alone, continued to fight in their mountains with the fury of despair. The emancipation of Italy was accompanied, nevertheless, with a restrictive measure which was designed to preserve to the Romans the preponderance in the comitia. To the thirty-five old tribes, eight new ones were added, in which all the Italiotes were inscribed; and, as the votes were reckoned by tribes, and not by head, it is evident that the influence of the new citizens must have been nearly null.697

Etruria had taken no part in the Social War. The nobility was devoted to Rome, and the people lived in a condition approximating to bondage. The law Julia, which gave to the Italiotes the right of Roman city, and which took its name from its author, the consul L. Julius Cæsar, produced among the Etruscans a complete revolution. It was welcomed with enthusiasm.

While Italy was in flames, Mithridates VI., king of Pontus, determined to take advantage of the weakness of the Republic to aggrandise himself. In 664, he invaded Bithynia and Cappadocia, and expelled the kings, allies of Rome. At the same time he entered into communication with the Samnites, to whom he promised subsidies and soldiers. Such was the hatred then inspired by the Romans in foreign countries, that an order of Mithridates was sufficient to raise the province of Asia, where, in one day, eighty thousand Romans were massacred.698 At this time the Social War was already approaching its end. With the exception of Samnium, all Italy was subdued, and the Senate could turn its attention to the distant provinces.

Sylla (666).

VII. Sylla, appointed consul in recompense for his services, was charged with the task of chastising Mithridates. While he was preparing for this mission, the tribune of the people, P. Sulpicius, had formed a powerful party. A remarkable man, though without scruples, he had the qualities and the defects of most of those who played a part in these epochs of dissension.699 Escorted by six hundred Roman knights, whom he called the Anti-Senate,700 he sold publicly the right of citizen to freedmen and foreigners, and received the price on tables raised in the middle of the public place.701 He caused a plebiscitum to be passed to put an end to the subterfuge of the law Julia, which, by an illusory re-partition, cheated the Italiotes of the very rights which it seemed to accord to them; and instead of maintaining them in the eight new tribes, he caused them to be inscribed in the thirty-five old ones. The measure was not adopted without warm discussions; but Sulpicius was supported by all the new citizens, together with the democratic faction and Marius. A riot carried the vote and Sylla, threatened with death, was obliged to take refuge in the house of Marius, and hastily quit Rome. Master of the town, Sulpicius showed the influences he obeyed, by causing to be given to the aged Marius the province of Asia, and the command of the expedition against Mithridates. But Sylla had his army in Campania, and was determined to support his own claims. While the faction of Marius, in the town, indulged in acts of violence against the contrary faction, the soldiers of Sylla were irritated at seeing the legions of his rival likely to snatch from them the rich booty which Asia promised; and they swore to avenge their chief. Sylla placed himself at their head, and marched from Nola upon Rome, with his colleague, Pompeius Rufus, who had just joined him. The greater part of the superior officers dared not follow him, so great was still the prestige of the eternal city.702 In vain deputations are addressed to him; he marches onwards, and penetrates into the streets of Rome. Assailed by the inhabitants, and attacked by Marius and Sulpicius, he triumphs only by dint of boldness and energy. It was the first time that a general, entering Rome as a conqueror, had seized the power by force of arms.

Sylla restored order, prevented pillage, convoked the assembly of the people, justified his conduct, and, wishing to secure for his party the preponderance in the public deliberations, he recalled to force the old custom of requiring the previous assent of the Senate before the presentation of a law. The comitia by centuries were substituted for the comitia by tribes, to which was left only the election of the inferior magistrates.703 Sylla caused Sulpicius to be put to death, and abrogated his decrees; and he set a price on the head of Marius, forgetting that he had himself, a short time before, found a refuge in the house of his rival. He proscribed the chiefs of the democratic faction, but most of them had fled before he entered Rome. Marius and his son had reached Africa through a thousand dangers. This revolution appears not to have been sanguinary, and, with the exception of Sulpicius, the historians of the time mention no considerable person as having been put to death. The terror inspired at first by Sylla lasted no long time. Reprobation of his acts was shown both in the Senate and among the people, who seized every opportunity to mark their discontent. Sylla was to resume the command of the army of Asia, and that of the army of Italy had fallen to Pompeius. The massacre of this latter by his own soldiers made the future dictator feel how insecure was his power; he sought to put a stop to the opposition to which he was exposed by accepting as a candidate at the consular comitia L. Cornelius Cinna, a known partisan of Marius, taking care, however, to exact from him a solemn oath of fidelity. But Cinna, once elected, held none of his engagements, and the other consul, Cn. Octavius, had neither the authority nor the energy necessary to balance the influence of his colleague.

Sylla, after presiding at the consular comitia, went in all haste to Capua to take the command of his troops, whom he led into Greece against the lieutenants of Mithridates. Cinna determined to execute the law of Sulpicius, which assimilated the new citizens to the old ones;704 he demanded at the same time the return of the exiles, and made an appeal to the slaves. Immediately the Senate, and even the tribunes of the people, pronounced against him. He was declared deposed from the consulate. “A merited disgrace,” says Paterculus, “but a dangerous precedent.”705 Driven from Rome, he hurried to Nola to demand an asylum of the Samnites, who were still in arms. Thence he went to sound the temper of the Roman army employed to observe Samnium, and, once assured of the dispositions of the soldiers in his favour, he penetrated into their camp, demanding protection against his enemies. His speeches and promises seduced the legions: they chose Cinna for their chief by acclamation, and followed him without hesitating. Meanwhile two lieutenants of Marius, Q. Sertorius and Cn. Papirius Carbo, both exiled by Sylla, proceeded to levy troops in the north of Italy; and the aged Marius landed in Etruria, where his presence was immediately followed by an insurrection. The Etruscan peasants accused the Senate as the cause of all their sufferings; and the enemy of the nobles and the rich appeared to them as an avenger sent by the gods. In ranging themselves under his banner, they believed that they were on the way with him to the pillage of the eternal city.

War was on the point of re-commencing, and this time Romans and Italiotes marched united against Rome. From the north, Marius, Sertorius, and Carbo were advancing with considerable forces. Cinna, master of Campania, was penetrating into Latium, while a Samnite army invaded it on the other side. To these five armies the Senate could oppose but one; that of Cn. Pompeius Strabo, an able general, but an intriguing politician, who hoped to raise himself under favour of the disorder. Quitting his cantonments in Apulia, he had arrived, by forced marches, under the walls of Rome, seeking either to sell his services to the Senate or to effect a conciliation with Marius. He soon saw that the insurgents were strong enough to do without him. His soldiers, raised in the Picenum and in the country of the Marsi, refused to fight for the Senate against their old confederates, and would have abandoned their general but for the courage and presence of mind of his son, a youth of twenty years of age, the same who subsequently was the great Pompey. One day the legionaries, snatching their ensigns, threatened to desert in mass: young Pompey laid himself across the gateway of the camp, and challenged them to pass over his body.706 Death delivered Pompeius Strabo from the shame of being present at an inevitable catastrophe. According to some authors, he sank under the attacks of an epidemic disease; according to others, he was struck by lightning in the very midst of his camp. Deprived of its chief, his army passed over to the enemy; the Senate was without defenders, and the populace rose against it: Rome opened her gates to Cinna and Marius.

The conquerors were without pity in putting to death, often with refinements in cruelty unknown to the Romans, the partisans of the aristocratic faction who had fallen into their hands. During several days, the slaves, whom Cinna had restored to liberty, gave themselves up to every excess. Sertorius, the only one of the chiefs of the democratic party who had some feelings of justice, made an example of these wretches, and massacred nearly four thousand of them.707

Marius and Cinna had proclaimed, as they advanced upon Rome in arms, that their aim was to assure to the Italiotes the entire enjoyment of the rights of Roman city; they declared themselves both consuls for the year 668. Their power was too considerable to be contested, for the new citizens furnished them with a contingent of thirty legions, or about 150,000 men.708 Marius died suddenly thirteen days after entering upon office, and the democratic party lost in him the only man who still preserved his prestige. A fact which arose out of his funeral, paints the manners of the epoch, and the character of the revolution which had just been effected. An extraordinary sacrifice was wanted for his tomb: the pontiff Q. Mucius Scævola, one of the most respectable old men of the nobility, was chosen as the victim. Conducted in pomp before the funeral pile of the conqueror of the Cimbri, he was struck by the sacrificer, who, with an inexperienced hand, plunged the knife into his throat without killing him. Restored to life, Scævola was cited in judgment, by a tribune of the people, for not having received the blow fairly.709

While Rome and all Italy were plunged in this fearful anarchy, Sylla drove out of Greece the generals of Mithridates VI., and gained two great battles at Chæronea (668) and Orchomenus (669). He was still in Bœotia, when Valerius Flaccus, sent by Cinna to replace him, landed in Greece, penetrated into Thessaly, and thence passed into Asia. Sylla followed him thither immediately, in haste to conclude with the King of Pontus an arrangement which would enable him to lead his army back into Italy. Circumstances were favourable. Mithridates had need to repair his losses, and he found himself in presence of a new enemy, the lieutenant of Valerius Flaccus, the fierce Flavius Fimbria, who, having by the murder of his general become head of the army of Asia, had seized upon Pergamus. Mithridates subscribed to the conditions imposed by Sylla; he restored all the provinces of which he had taken possession, and gave plate and money. Sylla then advanced into Lydia against Fimbria; but the latter, at the approach of the victor of Chæronea, could not restrain his soldiers. His whole army disbanded and passed over to Sylla. Threatened by his rival, the murderer of Flaccus was driven to slay himself. Nothing now stood in the way of Sylla’s projects on Italy, and he prepared to make his enemies at Rome pay dearly for their temporary triumph. At the moment of setting sail, he wrote to the Senate to announce the conclusion of the war in Asia, and his own speedy return. Three years, he said, had been sufficient to enable him to re-unite with the Roman empire Greece, Macedonia, Ionia, and Asia, and to shut up Mithridates within the limits of his old possessions; he was the first Roman who received an embassy from the King of the Parthians.710 He complained of the violence exercised against his friends and his wife, who had fled with a crowd of fugitives to seek an asylum in his camp.711 He added, without vain threats, his intention to restore order by force of arms; but he promised not to repeal the great measure of the emancipation of Italy, and ended by declaring that the good citizens, new as well as old, had nothing to fear from him.

This letter, which the Senate ventured to receive, redoubled the fury of the men who had succeeded Marius. Blood flowed again. Cinna, who caused himself to be re-elected consul for the fourth time, and Cn. Papirius Carbo, his colleague, collecting in haste numerous troops, but ill disciplined, prepared to do their best to make head against the storm which was approaching. Persuaded that Sylla would proceed along the Adriatic to invade Italy from the north, Cinna had collected at Ancona a considerable army, with the design of surprising him in the midst of his march, and attacking him either in Epirus or Illyria. But his soldiers, Italiotes in great part, encouraged by the promises of Sylla, and, moreover, full of contempt for their own general, said openly that they would not pass the sea. Cinna attempted to make an example of some of the mutineers. A revolt broke out, and he was massacred. To avoid a similar lot, Carbo, who came to take the command, hastened to promise the rebels that they should not quit Italy.

Sylla landed at Brundusium, in 671, at the head of an army of forty thousand men, composed of five legions, six thousand cavalry, and contingents from Peloponnesus and Macedonia. The fleet numbered sixteen hundred vessels.712 He followed the Appian Way, and reached Campania after a single battle, fought not far from Canusium.713 He brought the gold of Mithridates and the plunder of the temples of Greece, means of seduction still more dangerous than his ability on the field of battle. Hardly arrived in Italy, he rallied round him the proscripts and all those who detested the inapt and cruel government of the successors of Marius. The remains of the great families decimated by them repaired to his camp as to a safe place of refuge. M. Licinius Crassus became one of his ablest lieutenants, and it was then that Cn. Pompeius, the son of Strabo, a general at twenty-three years of age, raised an army in the Picenum, beat three bodies of the enemies, and came to offer to Sylla his sword, already redoubtable.

It was the beginning of the year 672 when Sylla entered Latium; he completely defeated, near Signia, the legions of the younger Marius, whose name had raised him to the consulship. This battle rendered Sylla master of Rome; but to the north, in Cisalpine Gaul and Etruria, Carbo, in spite of frequent defeats, disputed the ground with obstinacy against Pompey and Sylla’s other lieutenants. In the south, the Samnites had raised all their forces, and were preparing to succour Præneste, besieged by Sylla in person, and defended by young Marius. Pontius Telesinus, the general of the Samnites, finding it out of his power to raise the siege, conceived then the audacious and almost desperate idea of carrying his whole army to Rome, taking it by surprise, and sacking it. “Let us burn the wolves’ den,”714 he said to his soldiers: “so long as it exists, there will be no liberty in Italy.”

By a rapid night-march, Telesinus deceived the vigilance of his adversary; but, exhausted with fatigue, on arriving at the foot of the ramparts of Rome, the Samnites were unable to give the assault, and Sylla had time to arrive with the choicest of his legions.

A sanguinary battle took place at the very gates of the town, on the day of the calends of November, 672, and it continued far into the night. The left wing of the Romans was beaten and took to flight, in spite of the efforts of Sylla to rally it; Telesinus perished in the fight, and Crassus, who commanded the right wing, gained a complete victory. At daylight, the Samnites who had escaped the slaughter laid down their arms and demanded quarter.715

More than a year still passed away before the complete pacification of Italy, and it was only obtained by employing the most violent and sanguinary measures. Sylla made this terrible declaration, that he would not pardon one of his enemies. At Præneste, all the senators who were the partisans of Marius had their throats cut, and the inhabitants were put to the sword. Those of Norba, surprised through treason, rather than surrender, buried themselves under the ruins of their city.

Sylla had scrupled at nothing in his way to power; the corruption of the armies,716 the pillage of towns, the massacre of the inhabitants, and the extermination of his enemies; nor did he show any more scruples in maintaining himself in it. He inaugurated his return to the Senate by the slaughter, near the Temple of Bellona, of three thousand Samnites who had surrendered prisoners.717 A considerable number of the inhabitants of Italy were deprived of the right of city which had been granted them after the war of the allies;718 he invented a new punishment, that of proscription,719 and, in Rome alone, he banished four thousand seven hundred citizens, among whom were ninety senators, fifteen consulars, and two thousand seven hundred knights.720 His fury fell heaviest upon the Samnites, whose spirit of independence he feared, and he almost entirely annihilated that nation.721 Although his triumph had been a reaction against the popular party, he treated as prisoners of war the children of the noblest and most respectable families, and, by a monstrous innovation, even the women suffered the same lot.722 Lists of proscription, placarded on the Forum with the names of the intended victims, threw terror into families; to laugh or cry on looking at these was a crime.723 M. Pletorius was slaughtered for having fainted at the sight of the punishment inflicted on the prætor, M. Marius;724 to denounce the hiding-place of the proscripts, or put them to death, formed a title to recompenses paid from the public treasury, amounting in some cases to twelve thousand drachmas (about 11,640 francs [£460]) a head;725 to assist them, to have had friendly or any other relations with the enemies of Sylla, was enough to subject the offender to capital punishment. From one end of Italy to the other, all those who had served under the orders of Marius, Carbo, or Norbanus, were massacred or banished, and their goods sold by auction. They were to be struck even in their posterity: the children and grandchildren of the proscripts were deprived of the right of inheritance and of being candidates for public offices.726 All these acts of pitiless vengeance had been authorised by a law called Valeria, promulgated in 672, and which, in appointing Sylla dictator, conferred upon him unlimited powers. Yet, though Sylla kept the supreme power, he permitted the election of the consuls every year, an example which was subsequently followed by the emperors.

Calm re-established in Rome, a new constitution was promulgated, which restored the aristocracy to its ascendency. The dictator fell into the delusion of believing that a system founded by violence, upon selfish interests, could survive him. It is easier to change laws than to arrest the course of ideas.

The legislation of the Gracchi was abolished. The senators, by the law judiciaria, acquired again the exclusive privilege of the judicatory functions. The colony of Capua, a popular creation, was destroyed and restored to the domain. Sylla assumed to himself one of the first privileges of the censorship, which he had suppressed—the nomination of the members of the Senate. He introduced into that assembly, decimated during the civil wars, three hundred knights. By the law on the priesthood, he removed from the votes of the people and restored to the college the choice of the pontiffs and of the sovereign pontiff. He limited the power of the tribunes, leaving them only the right of protection (auxilium),727 and forbidding their access to the superior magistracies.728 He flattered himself that he had thus removed the ambitious from a career henceforward profitless.

He admitted into Rome ten thousand new citizens (called Cornelians),729 taken from among the slaves whose masters had been proscribed. Similar enfranchisements took place in the rest of Italy. He had almost exterminated two nations, the Etruscans and the Samnites; he re-peopled their deserted countries by distributing the estates of his adversaries among a considerable number of his soldiers, whom some authors raise to the prodigious number of forty-seven legions,730 and created for his veterans twenty-three military colonies on the territory taken from the rebel towns.731

All these arbitrary measures were dictated by the spirit of reaction; but those which follow were inspired by the desire to re-establish order and the hierarchy.

The rules formerly adopted for the succession of the magistracies were restored.732 No person could offer himself for the consulship without having previously held the office of prætor; or for the prætorship before he had held that of questor. Thirty years were fixed as the age necessary for the questorship, forty for the prætorship, and forty-three for the consulship. The law required an interval of two years between the exercise of two different magistracies, and often between the same magistracy, a rule so severely maintained, that, for having braved it in merely soliciting for the consulship,733 Lucretius Ofella, one of Sylla’s most devoted partisans, was put to death. The dictator withdrew from the freedmen the right of voting, from the knights the places of honour in the spectacles; he put a stop to the adjudications entrusted to the farmers-general and the distributions of wheat, and suppressed the corporations, which threatened a real danger to public tranquillity. Lastly, to put limits to extravagance, the sumptuary laws were promulgated.734

By the law de provinciis ordinandis, he sought to regulate the provinces and ameliorate their administration. The two consuls and the eight prætors were retained at Rome during their year of office by the administration of civil affairs. They took afterwards, in quality of proconsuls or proprætors, the command of one of the ten provinces, which they exercised during a year; after which a new curiate law became necessary to renew the imperium; they preserved it until their return to Rome. Thirty days were allowed to them for quitting the province after the arrival of their successors.735 The number of prætors, questors, pontiffs, and augurs was augmented.736 Every year twenty questors were to be named, which would ensure the recruitment of the Senate, since this office gave entrance to it. Sylla multiplied the commissions of justice. He took measures for putting a stop to the murders which desolated Italy (lex de sicariis), and to protect the citizens against outrages (lex de injuriis). The lex magistratis completed, so to say, the preceding.737 In the number of crimes of high treason, punished capitally, are the excesses of magistrates charged with the administration of the provinces; quitting their government without leave of the Senate; conducting an army beyond the limits of his province; undertaking a war unauthorised; treating with foreign chiefs: such were the principal acts denounced as crimes against the Republic. There was not one of them of which Sylla himself had not been guilty.

Sylla abdicated in 675, the only extraordinary act which remained for him to accomplish. He who had carried mourning into so many families returned into his own house alone, through a respectful and submissive crowd. Such was the ascendency of his old power, supported, moreover, by the ten thousand Cornelians present in Rome and devoted to his person,738 that, though he had resumed his position of simple citizen, he was still allowed to act as absolute master, and even on the eve of his death, which occurred in 676, he made himself the executioner of pitiless justice, in daring to cause to be slaughtered before his eyes the prætor Granius, guilty of exaction.739

Unexampled magnificence was displayed at his funeral; his body was carried to the Campus Martius, where previously none but the kings had been inhumed.740 He left Italy tamed, but not subdued; the great nobles in power, but without moral authority; his partisans enriched, but trembling for their riches; the numerous victims of tyranny held down, but growling under the oppression; lastly, Rome taught that henceforth she is without protection against the boldness of any fortunate soldier.741

Effects of Sylla’s Dictatorship.

VII. The history of the last fifty years, and especially the dictatorship of Sylla, show beyond doubt that Italy demanded a master. Everywhere institutions gave way before the power of an individual, sustained not only by his own partisans, but also by the irresolute multitude, which, fatigued by the action and reaction of so many opposite parties, aspired to order and repose. If the conduct of Sylla had been moderated, what is called the Empire would probably have commenced with him; but his power was so cruel and so partial, that after his death, the abuses of liberty were forgotten in the memory of abuses of tyranny. The more the democratic spirit had expanded, the more the ancient institutions lost their prestige. In fact, as democracy, trusting and passionate, believes always that its interests are better represented by an individual than by a political body, it was incessantly disposed to deliver its future to the man who raised himself above others by his own merit. The Gracchi, Marius, and Sylla, had in turn disposed at will of the destinies of the Republic, and trampled under foot with impunity ancient institutions and ancient customs; but their reign was ephemeral,742 for they only represented factions. Instead of embracing collectively the hopes and interests of all the peninsula of Italy, they favoured exclusively particular classes of society. Some sought before all to secure the prosperity of the proletaries of Rome, or the emancipation of the Italiotes, or the preponderance of the knights; others, the privileges of the aristocracy. They failed.

To establish a durable order of things there wanted a man who, raising himself above vulgar passions, should unite in himself the essential qualities and just ideas of each of his predecessors, avoiding their faults as well as their errors. To the greatness of soul and love of the people of certain tribunes, it was needful to join the military genius of great generals and the strong sentiments of the Dictator in favour of order and the hierarchy.

The man capable of so lofty a mission already existed; but perhaps, in spite of his name, he might have still remained long unknown, if the penetrating eye of Sylla had not discovered him in the midst of the crowd, and, by persecution, pointed him out to public attention. That man was Cæsar.