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The Historians' History of the World 05 [The Roman Republic]
- Автор: Gutenberg
- Год: 1905
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: История
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To quote again from Beesly’sc acute summing-up of Caius Gracchus.
“The man who originates is always so far greater than the man who imitates, and Caius only followed where his brother led. The very dream which Caius told to the people shows that his brother’s spell was still on him, and his telling it, together with his impetuous oratory and his avowed fatalism, militates against the theory that Tiberius was swayed by impulse and sentiment, and he by calculation and reason. But no doubt he profited by experience of the past. He had learned how to bide his time, and to think generosity wasted on the murderous crew whom he had sworn to punish. Pure in life, perfectly prepared for a death to which he considered himself foredoomed, glowing with one fervent passion, he took up his brother’s cause with a double portion of his brother’s spirit, because he had thought more before action, because he had greater natural eloquence, and because being forewarned he was forearmed.
“In spite of the labours of recent historians, the legislation of Caius Gracchus is still hard to understand. Where the original authorities contradict each other, as they often do, probable conjecture is the most which can be attained, and no attempt will be made here to specify what were the measures of the first tribunate of Caius and what of the second. The general scope and tendency of his legislation is clear enough. It was to overthrow the senatorial government, and in the new government to give the chief share of the executive power to the mercantile class, and the chief share of the legislative power to Italians. These were his immediate aims. Probably he meant to keep all the strings he thus set in motion in his own hands, so as to be practically monarch of Rome. But whether he definitely conceived the idea of monarchy, and, looking beyond his own requirements, pictured to himself a successor at some future time inheriting the authority which he had established, no one can say. In such vast schemes there must have been much that was merely tentative. But had he lived and retained his influence we may be sure that the Empire would have been established a century earlier than it was.”c
George Longd says: “We may acquit the Gracchi of the Roman vice of greediness, but not of ill-directed ambition. Their object was not to enrich themselves, but to destroy the power of the Optimates by rousing against them the people, and using their votes to make a revolution. But this popular agitation increased an evil which already existed. The Gracchi used the popular vote for their purpose, as the nobles had long used it for their ends. Under the name of the public interest men on both sides sought their own.”
FOOTNOTES
[74] [The number of sons qualified to hold public property was two.]
[75] [George Longd defends their authenticity, saying: “The critics whose eyes are so sharp that they cannot see what is before them and see what is not, tell us that these fragments are rhetorical inventions. Now Gracchus’ speeches were read in Cicero’s time and later; and it is as reasonable to suppose that Appian and Plutarch used these speeches, as to suppose that they invented speeches or copied from those who invented them. The speeches are like genuine stuff.”]
[76] [The difficulty in the way of the first alternative here suggested is that in all probability Octavius would have vetoed any proposal for reform. The second alternative was impracticable because Tiberius was constitutionally ineligible to re-election. It is doubtful whether any constitutional means of reform existed.]
[77] Piso, the other consul, was employed in extinguishing the Slave War in Sicily.
[78] [George Longd doubts this, saying that Caius was still in Spain.]
[79] [It is now generally agreed that various classes of poor people should be supported by the government; the question is whether the Romans were wise in supporting so many and in such a way.]
[80] [Appian,g the authority for this matter, more probably means that before the tribuneship of Caius a law had been passed permitting the re-election of a tribune in case of a lack of candidates.]
[81] [“This,” says Long,d “is the first instance in Roman history of head-money being offered and paid, but it was not the last.”]
Roman Tweezers
(In the British Museum)
CHAPTER XVI. THE JUGURTHINE AND OTHER WARS
[123-112 B.C.]
The cruel times which followed made the best men of both parties regret the untimely end of those who had sacrificed wealth, rank, tranquillity, in the hope of reforming the state by peaceful methods. But Marius was not the worst of the successors of the Gracchi. So savage were the party quarrels which followed, that good men shrank in despair from the cause of reform, and the conduct of the popular party was abandoned to needy demagogues. Such is the common course of revolutions. They begin with noble aspirations; they end in reckless violence. At length public spirit is lost, and all men, sighing for tranquillity, seek it in the strong rule of an armed soldier. It is a thrice-told tale.
As the murder of Tiberius had been avenged upon Nasica, so there was even now found a tribune bold enough to indict Opimius. The accuser bore the time-honoured name of Decius; the defender was that Carbo who was more than suspected of Scipio’s murder, and who was now consul (120 B.C.); his eloquence and the terror that prevailed procured an acquittal. But Carbo, though he earned the gratitude of the nobility by defending their champion, did not find his eloquence equally effectual in defending himself. It was at that time the practice of young Romans who aspired to distinction to attract public notice by indicting some great offender before the people. L. Licinius Crassus, son of Crassus the pontifex, and brother-in-law of C. Gracchus, though only one-and-twenty years of age, felt within him that power of speech which in later days gained him the appellation of the orator; and he singled out Carbo for attack. So fierce was the invective of the young accuser that Carbo put an end to his own life by poison.
The nobility probably cared little for the life of a worthless renegade. The best men in the senate, indeed, regretted what they considered the necessity of taking up arms against Gracchus. First among these was old Metellus Macedonicus, who died full of honours and years seven years after the death of C. Gracchus. He left four sons. Before his death three of them had been consuls; the fourth was candidate for the consulship at his father’s death; but his two nephews, sons of his brother Calvus, were more distinguished than his own offspring. Quintus the younger, under the title of Numidicus, shortly afterwards became the most eminent man in the ranks of the nobility. In the course of twenty years the Metelli enjoyed six consulships and four censorships, besides five triumphs. Such an aggregation of honours in one family was without example. The worst fault of the Metelli was pride; but if they were not beloved, they were at least respected by the people.
A person who plays a large part in the events of the next years was M. Æmilius Scaurus, a man of more dubious character. Horace names him with some of the greatest men of olden time; Sallust represents him as disgracing high qualities by an inordinate love for money. The facts we shall have to record will show that in his earlier days he was infected by the corruption of his compeers, while in later life his prudence was so great as to stand for principle. He was born in 163 B.C., so that at the fall of C. Gracchus he had reached that ripe age which was required for the consulship. Though he belonged to a great patrician gens, his family was so obscure that he was accounted a new man. His father had been a charcoal merchant, and left his son so poor that the future ruler of the empire had at one time contemplated following the trade of a money-changer. But he was encouraged to try the chances of political life, and in 115 B.C. he reached the consulate. By his ability and discretion he so won the confidence of the senate that at the first vacancy he was named princeps. He was a man less seen than felt. His oratory wanted fire; but his talents for business, and his dexterity in the management of parties, made him the most important person in the field of politics from the fall of Gracchus to the rise of Sulla.