Ancient Rome: An Introductory History (30 page)

Page 140

infrastructure, by reconstructing sewers, destroying the pipes that some had illegally connected to the aqueducts to bring water into their houses, tearing down houses that had been built illegally on public land, and raising the rent on public land. Consequently he became very unpopular with some Romans, but others erected a statue of him in the Temple of Salus, for he had tried to restore Rome's health.

Unlike Cato, Scipio Africanus was fond of Greek culture and ways. In 204
B.C.
, while he was in Sicily preparing for the invasion of Africa (see chapter 14), he was under attack by his political enemies in the Senate. Cato had been Scipio's quaestor, and he reported to the Senate that Scipio was wasting money on theater amusements for his men and on athletic contests. We also hear that "the general's style of living was not only not characteristically Roman, it was not even real army. He would hold his parades in the exercise area, wearing a Greek cloak and Greek slippers, and he spent his time and energy on books and Greek wrestling. His whole staff also just as indolently and lazily was enjoying the pleasantries of Syracuse, having totally forgotten about Carthage and Hannibal. He had let the whole army be corrupted by all that indulgence" (Livy XXIX.19.11).

Scipio was exonerated of charges of wasting money, being extravagant, and sacrificing Rome's better interests to secure the safety of his son (whom Antiochus had captured and returned without ransom). However, in disgust at Rome's treatment of him, he retired in self-imposed exile to his estate in Liternum, ordering in his will that his body not be buried in ungrateful Rome. His brother Lucius fared worse: He refused even to give an account of the finances of the campaign against Antiochus and thus fell under suspicion of receiving bribes; for this he was expelled from the knights.

Yet despite his victory over the Scipios, Cato lost the war against Hellenism. The next two centuries saw a Golden Age of Latin literature, which became an amalgam of Greek, Roman, and Italian elements. This Greco-Roman literature shaped the intellectual development of western Europe.

Page 141

Chapter 16
The Gracchi
The Beginning of the End of the Res Publica

The period of the brothers Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, who held tribunates in 133 and 123-122
B.C
. respectively, inaugurates a century of incessant civil strife in Rome, with occasional outbursts of civil war. The struggle culminates in the civil wars of 49-31
B.C
. and in the final destruction of the republican form of government. A century after the Gracchi, Rome was governed by the principate, a type of monarchy, created by Octavian (Augustus).

Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus came from a plebeian family that was well known and respected; their father had twice been a consul and once a censor, and their mother Cornelia, who personally supervised the education of her sons, was a daughter of Scipio Africanus. Tiberius, the elder of the two brothers, had a past that he and his family could be proud of. As a very young man, he had been honored with an augurship. Accompanying P. Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus (adopted son of Scipio Africanus) to Carthage in 149
B.C
., Tiberius had won the
corona muralis, a
crown awarded a soldier for being the first to climb over the walls of a besieged city. When he was a quaestor in Spain, his personal influence and reputation for fair dealing had helped save the lives of twenty thousand fellow Roman soldiers trapped by enemy troops; for that he should have been awarded the
corona civica
, a crown of oak leaves awarded to a soldier for saving the life of a fellow soldier. His early accomplishments presaged an illustrious career in service to Rome. Yet Tiberius was murdered in political strife, and his body dumped into the Tiber; his name to some Romans came to symbolize attempts at tyranny frustrated by patriots.

Page 142

The trouble began when Tiberius was elected tribune in 133
B.C
. He immediately called for reforms to address several problems:

1.
Decline of the peasantry
. Since its beginnings, Rome had been a city-state of peasant farmers working small farms, who served in the army in Rome's time of need. The number of family farms not just in Rome but also in all Italy had declined as Rome's increasing involvement in overseas wars required that the citizen-farmers leave their farms to fight in Spain, Greece, Gaul, Africa, or Asia. The family farmers typically did not own slaves who would work the land while the masters fought Rome's battles, and they did not have the money to live on while they restored their farms after long periods of neglect. Before Rome had overseas entanglements, the farmer-soldier could quickly return home when the war was finished, and work on the farm, although the story of the former centurion (see chapter 8) shows how difficult survival was even when Rome waged wars with immediate neighbors.

When these family farmers quit farming, they typically sold their land to wealthy men, who combined their purchases of many small farms into plantations worked by slaves; these large enterprises, called
latifundia
, also concentrated on raising sheep and cattle, thus increasing Rome's dependence on grain imported from Sicily and Africa.

The displaced peasants could try to make a new start by farming the public lands, which were lands Rome had confiscated either from its conquered enemies during its expansion in the fourth and third centuries or from those towns and cities that had taken Hannibal's side. A law, the Lex Licinia, forbade one man from farming more than 500
iugera
(300 acres) of public land, but the rich landowners used their superior knowledge of the law and their powerful connections to drive the peasants from the public lands, which they then incorporated into their
latifundia
. The displaced farmers then drifted to the big city, Rome, to become craftsmen, tradesmen, or, more likely, one of the growing mass of the unemployed. Since there was no significant industry in ancient Italy and no demand for free labor, since servile labor was so cheap, the displaced farmers could no longer meet the property qualification for being a soldier. Rome's military might therefore suffered.

Page 143

2.
Slave rebellions
. While traveling through Etruria on his way to Spain, Tiberius had noticed the great numbers of slave gangs working the fields and the dearth of peasants working family farms. The large numbers of slaves in Italy, if united under a capable leader, could cause great havoc in Italy. Such slave rebellions had already occurred in Asia, Greece, and, as recently as 135, in Sicily (a rebellion that the Romans overcame only with great difficulty).

3.
Agitation of the Italian allies for suffrage
. Ever since Rome and its allies had gained control of Italy early in the third century
B.C
., there had been roughly three classes into which the Italians could fall in their legal relations to Rome. First were the Roman citizens; second were those who held Latin rights (
Latinum nomen
), which meant Roman citizenship except for the right to vote and to pursue political office in Rome; third were the
socii Italici
, who had no rights in Rome and no say in the government of Italy or of the other Roman territories. Although liable for military service, the
socii
could not vote for the generals under whom they would serve and had no say in whether war should be declared. The Italians had long been pressing the Romans for some type of representation in governing Italy and the republic.

To address these problems, Tiberius proposed the following reform. He reaffirmed the old limit set by the Lex Licinia of 500
iugera
of public land per man; to appease those already illegally farming public lands, he allowed the man, if a father, to claim an additional 250
iugera
(150 acres) per son, with a maximum of 500
iugera
for two sons. The rest of the illegally farmed land was to be confiscated and distributed to the landless poor, who could claim land according to the provisions of the Lex Licinia. The goals of this reform were to revive the family farmer in Italy, to relieve Rome of its unemployed poor, to increase the number of men eligible for service in the army, and to lessen the number of slaves in Italy.

Tiberius had the support of a few powerful men in the Senate, such as the consul Mucius Scaevola and Appius Claudius Pulcher, the
princeps senatus
; he would certainly need their help against the nobles who were illegally farming the public lands. Laelius, Scipio Africanus' friend, had made a similar but more radical

Page 144

proposal years earlier, but he had promptly withdrawn it upon encountering opposition from some members of the aristocracy, who did not want to lose what they had invested in the illegally farmed lands. Tiberius encountered the same opposition, but did not bend to it; he pressed forward with the bill.

Tiberius created more opposition and hostility to his plan than would have been expected. Instead of bringing his plan to the Senate for its advice and approval, as was customary before bringing a bill before the Popular Assembly, he immediately brought his plan to the Popular Assembly, without first consulting the Senate. His snub of the Senate alienated many who might have supported him; they fought the bill for political reasons, simply to avenge the insult. They succeeded in getting another tribune to veto Tiberius' law; when Tiberius could not persuade that tribune to withdraw his veto, he convinced the Assembly to approve a law deposing the other tribune. Thus Tiberius removed the tribune and his veto, and the bill passed. A commission began to distribute the land.

The members of the Senate were alarmed. Tiberius had bypassed them in proposing the bill, and with measures of questionable legality he had squashed their legal attempt to defeat his bill. Was he aiming at making the Assembly and the tribunes the rulers in Rome? If he could simply eliminate the Senate's legal opposition to him, what would prevent him from becoming a tyrant and starting a social revolution with cancellation of debts and redistribution of land?

The senators had one more trick up their sleeves: They would deny Tiberius the money he needed to finance the land commission. But Tiberius got lucky: Attalus III, king of Pergamum, died and bequeathed his kingdom to Rome, including his substantial treasury. Tiberius then proposed a law to distribute Attalus' money to those who had been allotted public lands. The Senate relented and gave him the money for the land commission.

Tiberius' hardball politics had turned still more senators against him. He realized that he needed to be tribune for another year, both for his own protection and for the preservation of his laws, which the senators would doubtless declare illegal once he was out of office. Being elected to an office two years in a row was

Page 145

illegal for magistrates, although it was unclear whether the law applied to tribunes. To help his bid for reelection, he proposed more laws that would strengthen his popularity among the common people.

Tiberius' proposals compelled some members of the Senate to take action. Led by Scipio NasicaGracchus' cousin and one of the largest owners of the public landsthey ordered the consul Scaevola to put down the tyrant; Scaevola responded that he would not be the first to use violence and would put no citizen to death without a trial. So a group of senators, led by Nasicawho, as pontifex maximus, was supposed to remain free of bloodshedfearing that Tiberius was aiming at a tyranny, attacked and killed him and three hundred of his supporters. They dumped his body into the Tiber and denied Gaius permission to bury his older brother. Some of Tiberius' supporters survived the attack and soon found themselves on trial, while others were driven into exile without a trial. Those who had murdered Tiberius were not brought to trial; eventually the Senate, embarrassed by Nasica, sent him to Asia as head of some mission, where he later died. Nonetheless, the land commission continued distributing land.

Gaius, nine years younger than his brother, had been a member of the land commission. Some years after Tiberius' murder, Gaius had a dream in which the ghost of Tiberius said to him, ''Gaius, what are you waiting for? There is no escape. We have both been given but one life and one death for fighting for the good of the common people" (Plutarch,
Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus
I). Gaius was elected tribune for 123 and reelected for 122. Gaius was more passionate than his brother; when he gave a speech, he was often so swept away by his emotions that his voice became high and grating, at which point he had a slave blow a little whistle, as a sign that Gaius should calm down. The senators feared him even more than his brother. He continued Tiberius' work and proposed some reforms of his own:

1.
The establishment of many colonies
. One of these was at the former site of Carthage, which had been destroyed in 146. Besides addressing a need to free Rome of many idle and unemployed people, establishing colonies would also make Gaius immensely

Other books

Trickster's Choice by Tamora Pierce

The Bucket List by Carter, Skyla

Kresley Cole - [MacCarrick Brothers 02] by If You Desire

La lista de los doce by Matthew Reilly

Delilah's Diary #1: A Sexy Journey by Jasinda Wilder

Drunk Dial (Hard Core #1) (Hard Core Series) by Michaels, Carly

Dangerous Seduction: A Nemesis Unlimited Novel by Archer, Zoë

Monday Night Jihad by Elam, Jason & Yohn, Steve

Joe Victim: A Thriller by Paul Cleave

Whiskers & Smoke by Marian Babson