THE ROMAN HISTORY. BOOK VII. FROM THE DEATH OF THE YOUNGER GRACCHUS, IN THE THE VERY FORM OF THAT CONSTITUTION, INTRODUCTION. c. 4. Ꭶ 7. WHEN, in the year of Rome 386, the contest between the patricians and plebeians, on occasion of the new laws preferred by the tribune Licinius, was come to such a degree of heat as to threaten a sudden flame of civil war; the great Camillus, being then dictator, turned himself towards the Capitol,and, having prayed the gods See b. 3. to put an end to the commotion, made a vow to build a temple to Concord, if union might be restored among his fellow-citizens. To his devotion he added his best endeavours to re-establish tranquillity, not by a bloody exercise of his dictatorial power, but by exhorting the furious disputants to mutual concessions. His persuasions proved effectual: the patricians suffered the new laws in favour of the plebeians to take place; the plebeians consented to the creation of a new magistracy [the prætorship] in favour of the patricians; and, by this compromise, an end was put to the fierce and dangerous conflict: and what, though already mentioned, is well worthy to be repeated, the domestic peace, thus re VOL. IV. B See b. 6. c. 7. Part 2. a stored, had no considerable interruption for the space of 230 years, till those Licinian laws of freedom and equality, the observance of which had so long main. tained the happy coalition, were outrageously violated by the nobles. To put a stop to this abuse, which, if not checked, must totally ruin the free constitution of Rome, was the enterprise of Tiberius Gracchus, for which he was murdered by a band of ruffian senators, b In the year 466 there was a secession of the debtors and bankrupts to Mount Janiculum; but as Mr. Moyle observes, (vol. 1. p. 116.) "This is omitted by several historians in the catalogue of the Roman seditions;" and "All authors agree it was composed without bloodshed by Hortensius the dictator, and that it ended in the revival of an excellent but antiquated law." He adds, "From this tumult to the sedition of Gracchus, in the six hundred and twentieth year of the city, Rome enjoyed a profound quiet and prosperity, not interrupted by the least domestic dissensions: an example of lasting tranquillity that can be paralleled in no monarchy whatsoever. This interim of time was the most happy and most glorious period of the Roman commonwealth," &c. Ibid. c. 10. 6 b During the regal state, and for many years after the establishment of the commonwealth, none but the patricians, that is, none but the senators and their de Kenn. Ant. scendants, were noble. Hence in many places of Livy, and other authors, we find nobilitas used for the patrician order, and so opposed to plebs.. But in aftertimes, when the plebeians obtained access to the curule magistracies, they (without ceasing to be plebeian) procured, by those honours, the title of noble, and left it to their posterity: [Vid. Sig. de Jur. Civ. Rom. lib. 2. c. 20.] And these plebeian nobles were, generally speaking, united with the patrician in political views and measures. • "The common division of the people into nobiles, novi, and ignobiles, was taken from the right of using pictures or statues: an honour only allowed to such whose ancestors or themselves had borne some curule office, that is, had been curule ædile, censor, prætor, or consul. He that had the pictures or statues of his ancestors was termed nobilis; he that had only his own, novus; he that had neither, ignobilis. So that jus imaginis was much the same thing among them as the right of bearing a coat of arms among us: and their novus homo is equivalent to our upstart gentleman." What Mr. Kennet, in the same chapter, writes concerning another division of the Romans, the times we are entering upon make very proper to be here transcribed. "When we find the optimates and the populares opposed in authors, it would be unreasonable to make the same distinction betwixt these parties, as Sigonius and others lay down, That the populares were those who endeavoured by their words and actions to ingratiate themselves with the multitude; and the optimates those who so behaved themselves in all affairs as to make their conduct approved by every good man.' This application agrees much better with the sound of the words than with the sense of the things. For at this rate the optimates and the populares will be only other terms for the virtuous and the vicious; and it would be equally hard in such large divisions of men, to acknowledge one side to have been wholly honest, and to affirm the other to have been entirely wicked. I know that this opinion is built on the authority of Cicero: [Duo genera semper in hac civitate fuerunt-ex quibus alteri se populares, alteri optimates et haberi et esse voluerunt. Qui ea, quæ faciebant, quæque dicebant, jucunda multitudini esse volebant, populares; qui autem ita se gerebant, ut sua concilia optimo cuique probarent, optimates habebantur. Cic. pro Sext. 45.] but if we look on him, not only as a prejudiced person, but as an orator too, we shall not wonder, that in distinguishing the two parties, he gave so infamous a mark to the enemies' side, and so honourable a one to his own. Otherwise the murderers of Cæsar (who were the optimates) must pass for men of the highest probity; and the followers of Augustus (who were of the opposite faction) must seem in general a pack of profligate knaves. It would therefore be a much more moderate judgment to found the difference rather on policy than on morality, rather on the principles of government than of religion and private duty." headed by Scipio Nasica, who had neither magistracy, nor even the warrant of a special commission from the B. 6. c. 7. senate; though the greater part of its members approved the attempt, and assisted him in the execution. But when Caius Gracchus was to be taken off, for having renewed his brother's enterprise, the nobles, who remembered the disadvantages they brought themselves under, by acts of violence without the show of authority, and who had now a consul fit for their purpose, and wholly at their devotion, armed him with a despotic power to execute the dictates of their rage. And when Opimius, by massacres and by executions, without previous forms of process, had cut off the most active partisans of the popular cause, he had the piety (in this, without question, an emulator of the devout Camillus) to erect, in memory of his exploit, a temple to Concord, as if by the soft arts of persuasion, and by mutual concessions, the civil commotion had been quieted. The people could not behold this monument of tyrannical outrage without indignation. Under the inscription, Plut. on the frontispiece of the temple, was fixed up in the night, by an unknown hand, a line to this effect, SENSELESS FURY BUILDS A TEMPLE TO CONCORD. с And, indeed, what could be more extravagant than to hope that domestic peace and union would be the effect of such measures; or that any measures could be effectual to those ends, so long as the source of the disunion remained? Pref. to A late celebrated writer considers the government of Dr. Middl. Rome as then "brought to its perfect state, when its L. of Cic. honours were no longer confined to particular families P. 37. [the patrician], but proposed equally and indifferently to every citizen, who, by his virtue and services, either in war or in peace, could recommend himself to the notice and favour of his countrymen ;" and therefore he CVECORDIAE. OPVS. AEDEM. FACIT. CONCORDIAE. See b. 3. c. 9. Remarks, p. penult. and Hooke's Rom. Sen. p. 193. commends the tribunes of the commons (as I have elsewhere observed) for their labouring this point, and says, "they were certainly in the right, and acted like true patriots." Nevertheless the same writer, in the very same discourse, presently adds, "The tribunes however would not stop here; nor were content with securing the rights of the commons without destroying Observ. on those of the senate; and as oft as they were disappointed in their private views, and obstructed in the course of their ambition, used to recur always to the populace; whom they could easily inflame to what degree they thought fit, by the proposal of factious laws for dividing the public lands to the poorer citizens; or by the free distribution of corn; or the abolition of all debts; which are all contrary to the quiet, and discipline, and public faith, of societies. This abuse of the tribunitian power was carried to its greatest height by the two Gracchi, who left nothing unattempted, that could mortify the senate, or gratify the people; till by their agrarian laws, and other seditious acts, which were greedily received by the city, they had in great measure overturned that equilibrium of power in the republic, on which its peace and prosperity depended." Surely it must appear somewhat strange, that this admired author should applaud the tribunes, as true patriots, for effecting that which it was impossible for them to effect by any other measures than those which he condemns as factious and seditious. Should it be granted, that what he says of dividing the public lands, distribution of corn, and abolition of debts, is, in the general, true, yet certainly it is not true with regard to the particular case of the Roman republic. In vain would Licinius (in 386) have obtained the law which capacitated plebeians for the highest offices in the state, had the patricians been still permitted to engross to themselves the lands and possessions belonging to c. 4. § 1. Rom. Sen. it." Nor, to make that law effectual, and thereby establish an equilibrium of power in the republic, would his agrarian law have been sufficient, without the abolition of the debts; those debts retaining the debtors See b. 3. in a real servitude to the patrician creditors, the noble Ib. § 3. usurers. (There was experience of this during many years after the plebeians were, by a law enacted in 308, See made capable of the military tribuneship.) Whatever Observ. on portion, in the distribution of the public lands, might p. 66. have fallen to any poor indebted commoner, his creditor would soon have got it from him in payment, either of the principal sum, or of exorbitant interest. And so long as the nobles were possessors of all the lands, so long they could not but be absolute lords of the state. "Land (says a very ingenious writer) is the true See Moyle's centre of power; and the balance of dominion changes vol. i. p. 72. with the balance of property.-This is an eternal truth, and confirmed by the experience of all ages and governments; and so fully demonstrated by the great Harrington, in his Oceana, that it is as difficult to find out new arguments for it, as to resist the cogency of the old." The nobles of Rome, in the time of Tiberius Gracchus, seem to have been fully convinced .of this; when, even upon the terms of receiving, in Dr. Middleton, in judging of these matters, seems to have paid too blind a deference to the authority of Cicero. The ingenious translator of some of Cicero's orations into English, not dazzled by the splendour of his author's amazing talents, writes thus, in the preface to his third volume, p. 7. "I am sorry to say it, but it appears that our author, though an excellent senator, was but an indifferent patriot; and, though always an advocate for the government, he seems often to have lost sight of the constitution. "As our author, from his first entering upon public life, was a party in all the transactions of his own times, it is unjust to form a decisive notion of public measures, persons, or characters, from his writings. If I find that the people of Rome, from the confession of our author, from the concurring testimonies of all writers, and from the nature of their constitution, had not only a natural but a positive right to the benefit of agrarian laws, I am warranted by historical credibility to look upon this as an indisputable fact. Therefore when I see them struggling for the enjoyment of those privileges, I am bound in common justice to think them in the right, and those who oppose them in the wrong.- -When I see a justifiable measure pursued, and all the reason that I know for opposing that measure must be gathered from the representations of the other party, with whom there is no difference as to facts, common sense obliges me to be very cautious and distrustful in believing the representations of that party, and look upon them as colourings designed to heighten the beauty of his own features, and to give a stronger relief to the deformity of his antagonist." Works, |