LITMIR.BIZ

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and vice, and expressed in lively language his dislike of singing and dancing. 'Our children are taught disgraceful tricks. They go to actors' schools with sambucas and psalteries. They learn to sing—a thing which our ancestors considered to be a disgrace to freeborn children. When I was told this I could not believe that men of noble rank allowed their children to be taught such things. But being taken to a dancing school I saw—I did upon my honour—more than fifty boys and girls in the school; and among them one boy, quite a child, about twelve years of age, the son of a man who was at that time a candidate for office. And what I saw made me pity the Commonwealth. I saw the child dancing to the castanets, and it was a dance which one of our wretched, shameless slaves would not have danced.' On another occasion he showed a power of quick retort. As censor he had degraded a man named Asellus, whom Mummius afterwards restored to the equites. Asellus impeached Scipio, and taunted him with the unluckiness of his censorship—its mortality, &c. 'No wonder,' said Scipio, 'for the man who inaugurated it rehabilitated you.'

      Such anecdotes show that he was a vigorous speaker. He was of a healthy constitution, temperate, brave, and honest in money matters; for he led a simple life, and with all his opportunities for extortion did not die rich. Polybius, the historian, Panaetius, the philosopher, Terence and Lucilius, the poets, and the orator and politician Laelius were his friends. From his position, his talents, and his associations, he seemed marked out as the one man who could and would desire to step forth as the saviour of his country. But such self-sacrifice is not exhibited by men of Scipio's type. Too able to be blind to the signs of the times, they are swayed by instincts too strong for their convictions. An aristocrat of aristocrats, Scipio was a reformer only so far as he thought reform might prolong the reign of his order. From any more radical measures he shrank with dislike, if not with fear. The weak spot often to be found in those cultured aristocrats who coquet with liberalism was fatal to his chance of being a hero. He was a trimmer to the core, who, without intentional dishonesty, stood facing both ways till the hour came when he was forced to range himself on one side or the other, and then he took the side which he must have known to be the wrong one. Palliation of the errors of a man placed in so terribly difficult a position is only just; but laudation of his statesmanship seems absurd. As a statesman he carried not one great measure, and if one was conceived in his circle, he cordially approved of its abandonment. To those who claim for him that he saw the impossibility of those changes which his brother-in-law advocated, it is sufficient to reply that Rome did not rest till those changes had been adopted, and that the hearty co-operation of himself and his friends would have gone far to turn failure into success. But his mind was too narrow to break through the associations which had environed him from his childhood. When Tiberius Gracchus, a nobler man than himself, had suffered martyrdom for the cause with which he had only dallied, he was base enough to quote from Homer [Greek: os apoloito kai allos hotis toiaita ge hoezoi]—'So perish all who do the like again.'

      [Sidenote: Tiberius Gracchus.] But the splendid peril which Scipio shrank from encountering, his brother-in-law courted with the fire and passion of youth. Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus was, according to Plutarch, not quite thirty when he was murdered. Plutarch may have been mistaken, and possibly he was thirty-five. His father, whose name he bore, had been a magnificent aristocrat, and his mother was Cornelia, daughter of Hannibal's conqueror, the first Scipio Africanus, and one of the comparatively few women whose names are famous in history. He had much in common with Scipio Aemilianus, whom he resembled in rank and refinement, in valour, in his familiarity with Hellenic culture, and in the style of his speeches. Diophanes, of Mitylene, taught him oratory. The philosopher, Blossius, of Cumae, was his friend. He belonged to the most distinguished circle at Rome. He had married the daughter of Appius, and his brother had married the daughter of Mucianus. He had served under Scipio, and displayed striking bravery at Carthage; and, as quaestor of the incompetent Mancinus, had by his character for probity saved a Roman army from destruction; for the Numantines would not treat with the consul, but only with Gracchus. No man had a more brilliant career open to him at Rome, had he been content only to shut his eyes to the fate that threatened his country. But he had not only insight but a conscience, and cheerfully risked his life to avert the ruin which he foresaw. His character has been as much debated as his measures, and the most opposite conclusions have been formed about both, so that his name is a synonym for patriot with some, for demagogue with others. Even historians of our own day are still at variance as to the nature of his legislation. But from a comparison of their researches, and an independent examination of the authorities on which they are based, something like a clear conception of the plans of Gracchus seems possible. What has never, perhaps, as yet been made sufficiently plain is, who it was that Gracchus especially meant to benefit. Much of the public land previously described lay in the north and south of Italy from the frontier rivers Rubicon and Macra to Apulia. It formed, as Appian says, the largest portion of the land taken from conquered towns by Rome. [Sidenote: Agrarian proposals of Gracchus.] What Gracchus proposed was to take from the rich and give to the poor some of this land. It was, in fact, merely the Licinian law over again with certain modifications, and the existence of that law would make the necessity for a repetition of it inexplicable had it not been a curious principle with the Romans that a law which had fallen into desuetude ceased to be binding. But it actually fell short of the law of Licinius, for it provided that he who surrendered what he held over and above 500 jugera should be guaranteed in the permanent possession of that quantity, and moreover might retain 250 jugera in addition for each of his sons. Some writers conjecture that altogether an occupier might not hold more than 1,000 jugera.

      Now the first thing to remark about the law is that it was by no means a demagogue's sop tossed to the city mob which he was courting. Gracchus saw slave labour ruining free labour, and the manhood and soil of Italy and the Roman army proportionately depreciated. [Sidenote: Nothing demagogic about the proposal.] To fill the vacuum he proposed to distribute to the poor not only of Rome but of the Municipia, of the Roman colonies, and, it is to be presumed, of the Socii also, land taken from the rich members of those four component parts of the Roman State. This consideration alone destroys at once the absurd imputation of his being actuated merely by demagogic motives; but in no history is it adequately enforced. No demagogue at that epoch would have spread his nets so wide. At the same time it gives the key to the subsequent manoeuvres by which his enemies strove to divide his partisans. Broadly, then, we may say that Gracchus struck boldly at the very root of the decadence of the whole peninsula, and that if his remedy could not cure it nothing else could. [Sidenote: The Socii—land-owners.] How the Socii became possessors of the public land we do not know. Probably they bought it from Cives Romani, its authorised occupiers, with the connivance of the State. We now see from whom the land was to be taken, namely, the rich all over Italy, and to whom it was to be given, the poor all over Italy; and also the object with which it was to be given, namely, to re-create a peasantry and stop the increase of the slave-plague. [Sidenote: Provision against evasions of the law.] In order to prevent the law becoming a dead letter like that of Licinius, owing to poor men selling their land as soon as they got it, he proposed that the new land-owners should not have the right to dispose of their land to others, and for this, though it would have been hard to carry out, we cannot see what other proviso could have been substituted. Lastly, as death and other causes would constantly render changes in the holdings inevitable, he proposed that a permanent board should have the superintendence of them, and this too was a wise and necessary measure.

      [Sidenote: Provision for the administration of the law.] We can understand so much of the law of Gracchus, but it is hard thoroughly to understand more. It has been urged as a difficulty not easily explained that few people, after retaining 500 jugera for themselves and 250 for each of their sons, would have had much left to surrender. But this difficulty is imaginary rather than real; for Appian says that the public land was 'the greater part' of the land taken by Rome from conquered states, and the great families may have had vast tracts of it as pasture land. [Sidenote: Things about the law hard to understand.] There are, however, other things which with our meagre knowledge of the law we cannot explain. For instance, was a hard and fast line drawn at 500 jugera as compensation whether a man surrendered 2 jugera or 2,000 beyond that amount? Again, considering the outcry made, it is hard to imagine that only those possessing above 500 jugera were interfered with. But this perhaps may be accounted for by recollecting that in such matters men fight bravely against what they feel to be the thin end of the wedge, even if they are themselves concerned only sympathetically.

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