APPENDICES

A

THE LAST CENTURY OF THE REPUBLIC*

1. The Early Republic. The history of Rome after the expulsion of the kings (509 B.C.) is a story, first, of social controversies in which the plebeians in the course of about a century and a half finally triumphed in their struggle with the patricians for civil and political equality; then, of military conquests by which Rome, once a small town, enlarged her territory, until she had extended her dominion successively through Latium, through the remainder of the Italian peninsula, and finally through almost the whole circuit of the Mediterranean.

2. Condition of Rome. This rapid extension of territory was followed by a gradual absorption of the public land in the hands of a favored few. Italy, once a land of small farms and peasant homesteads, became in time a land of large plantations, owned by rich speculators and worked by imported slaves. The farmers thus dispossessed flocked in crowds to the streets of Rome, where, together with the large numbers of foreigners attracted to the capital from every quarter, they formed a dangerous class of idlers, whose presence was a constant menace to the welfare of the state. The provinces meanwhile had no share in the government, and were plundered by Roman officials and taxgatherers. The Senate, which as the controlling power in the commonwealth had once stood for all that was best in Roman statesmanship, had degenerated into an "order of lords, filling up its ranks by hereditary succession, and exercising collegiate misrule." In its degradation the Senate typified the general decadence that had taken place in the Roman character.

3. The causes of this decadence may be summed up as follows: the rapid increase of wealth and luxury; the spread of slavery of the

* Based mainly on Prof. Chas. H. Haskins's article under the heading "Rome " in Johnson's Universal Cyclopædia, vol. vii., pp. 170, 171.

most degraded sort, driving out free labor; the presence in the city of a large class of citizens "without occupation except in politics and with no property save in their votes" to be sold to the highest bidder; and the poverty of ancient society in forms of industrial employment.* Here should also be noted the inefficiency of the constitution, which, while well enough adapted to the needs of a small town, was altogether inadequate for the government of a people who had now overrun the whole of the then known world.

4. Parties. Largely through the workings of the land system above described, the Roman people in the last century of the Republic were divided into two great classes, consisting of the rich on one side and the poor on the other. Roman society was now made up of princes and paupers. We hear little at this time of patricians and plebeians. As political factions, the two classes are usually designated as the optimates, or the party of the nobles, who acted regularly in the interest of the Senate, and the populares, or democrats, who advocated the cause of the people. The nobles were those whose ancestors had held curule offices, and included in their ranks both patricians and plebeians. This new nobility, being in virtual control of the government, monopolizing all the higher offices, was an aristocracy of office, taking the place of the old nobility, which had been an aristocracy of birth.t

5. Orders. To be distinguished from the political factions mentioned in the preceding paragraph are the so-called "orders" (ordines), often mentioned in Cicero's orations. These were classes of citizens considered with reference to their constitutional and social standing in the community. The senators, for example, were spoken of collectively as the ordo senatorius, or senatorial order. Members of this order enjoyed special distinctions, such as the right to wear

* "Here we touch upon the fatal and irremediable defect of ancient society-the absence of industry as a social power, a necessary consequence of slave labor. The economic changes through which Rome had passed are in certain particulars strikingly like those of modern England-in the disappearance of peasant properties and the building up of a great landed aristocracy. What has saved England from the fate of Rome has been the absence of slavery and the marvellous development of new forms of productive industry, the great manufacturing and commercial interests of modern society. . . It [Rome] lived upon the spoils of conquered nations, and its only large industries were farming the revenues, carrying on speculative operations, and dealing in money."-ALLEN's Short History of the Roman People, p. 187.

+ The number of patrician gentes (clans, or groups of families) was greatly reduced in Cicero's day. "During the last years of the Republic, we hear of only fourteen still in existence, including thirty families."-Harper's Dictionary of Classical Literature and Antiquities. A man might, of course, be a noble without being a patrician.

the clavus latus (a broad stripe of purple, either sewn on the tunic or woven into it), to have reserved seats at shows, etc. At the same time they were excluded by law from trade and banking, and especially from transactions connected with state contracts.

6. Hence there grew up another class, called equites, or knights, consisting of wealthy traders, speculators, and capitalists. They borrowed their name from the centuries of knights which had formerly constituted the cavalry of the state, for which a high property qualification was required. In Cicero's time the term was applied to any Roman family that was not noble, and that possessed property worth 400,000 sesterces (between $16,000 and $20,000). Their numbers were from time to time augmented by accessions from the lower classes, as these prospered sufficiently to reach the necessary property qualification. The knights constituted the ordo equester, or equestrian order, and, like the senators, enjoyed special privileges to distinguish them from those beneath them in dignity. Among these badges of distinction were the gold ring and the clavus angustus (a narrow stripe of purple). They also had special seats at the shows, immediately behind the senatorial stalls.

7. While politically they formed an independent class, yet as men of substance with large financial interests at stake, the knights regularly sided with the party that promised best for those interests. When the democrats, to gain their ends, resorted to violence, the knights, as the friends of law and order, sided with the senate; but when the senate through apathy neglected equestrian interests (as, for example, when they allowed the pirates for a long time to interrupt Roman commerce on the Mediterranean), then the knights were on the side of the democrats.

8. The commercial importance of the knights was the basis finally of their political importance in the state. As the wealthy class, they were enabled to farm the public taxes, i.e. for a round sum to buy the privilege of collecting the taxes laid upon the subject provinces of Rome. To increase their gains as much as possible, these publicani, as they were called, practised the most grievous oppression towards the provincials, whose only recourse was to the provincial governors. The governors, however, were members of the Roman nobility, who were quite as bad as the publicani. Official misconduct, however, rendered the governors liable to prosecution at the close of their terms of office. Hence the question who should sit on the juries that tried the governors on their return to Rome was equally important to the governors themselves and to the knights, whose interests in the provinces were in a measure dependent upon

the disposition of the governors. Until the time of Gaius Gracchus (123 B.C.) the jurymen had been taken exclusively from senatorial ranks, i.e. from the same class to which the governors belonged. As a consequence the courts had been notoriously partial to the offenders. If the student will glance ahead at sections 11, 17, and 20 below (under the Gracchi, Sulla, and Pompey), he will see that the question of the courts was for a long time one of the great issues in Roman politics. In the trial of Verres (see the first Oration in this book), Cicero lays great stress on this matter, although loyalty to his own class, or order, makes him overstate the purity of the knights as jurymen.

9. While the senatorial class was spoken of as the ordo senatorius and the knights as the ordo equester, the populace was not dignified by any such title as ordo at all, but was simply called populus, a term applied in a wider sense to the whole people also.

The importance of the distinction between orders and factions may be illustrated with examples. Caesar was not only a member of one of the few patrician families still left in Rome, but he was also of the ordo senatorius. Hence we should expect him to belong to the party of the optimates. On the contrary, it suited his purpose to act with the populares, a party to which he was also bound by family ties, Marius ($12) having married his aunt, while he himself married Cinna's ($15) daughter. Cicero, on the other hand, was of equestrian birth, and throughout his career was loyal to the interests of the knights. Now the knights, as we have already seen, owed political allegiance to neither party, and hence Cicero's loyalty to them, coupled with his naturally conservative temperament, makes him sometimes appear inconsistent in his conduct. Nevertheless, after entering the senate he acted, as a rule, with the senate and the party of the opti mates.

10. The Gracchi. As the champion of the people Tiberius Gracchus (tribune * in 133 B.C.) sought to remedy the evils of the land system (see §2 above) by enforcing certain old laws (the Licinian) which had fallen into neglect. These laws limited the amount of land which any individual might hold, and required all landholders to employ a certain proportion of free laborers. Eighty thousand citizens were thus provided with homesteads before the measure was suspended. At the end of his term of office, foreseeing the impossibility of the reelection which he sought, he resorted to violent methods, and was

* The tribunate was the usual organ of opposition to the senate and the optimates. Abuse of its powers often led to revolution. For the powers of the tribunes, see Appendix C, §9.

slain with three hundred of his followers by a mob with P. Scipio Nasica at its head.

11. Ten years later his younger brother, Gaius Gracchus (tribune in 123-122 B.C.), saw the need of reform in the senate itself as the supreme power in the state. Accordingly, after reënacting his brother's agrarian measures, he aimed his legislation directly at the senate, restricting its powers both at home and in the provinces, while as a counterpoise to senatorial influence he raised the knights to a position of importance by transferring to them the functions of jurymen, which had hitherto belonged exclusively to the senate ($8). Still further to humble the pride of the senate, and at the same time to increase its efficiency, he purposed to recruit that body from the ranks of the knights. With the lower classes he won popularity by regular distributions of grain at greatly reduced prices, a mischievous measure in that it attracted to the capital thousands of thriftless persons who fed at the public expense. Reëlected tribune (122 B.C.), Gaius proposed to extend the franchise to the Italian allies (socii). Although the proposal was not carried, it lost for him his popularity, and in the disorder which followed he perished, like his brother, by a violent death (121 B.C.). Most of his laws were speedily reversed by the senate, which body once more resumed its sway of misrule.

12. Marius (b. 155, d. 86 B.c.). The rise of C. Marius marks the beginning of a new force in Roman politics. Indebted for his fame chiefly to the crushing defeat with which he repulsed the Teutones and the Cimbri (102–101 B.C.), Marius was "the first of a line of military heroes under whom the Republic went out and the Empire came in." Under him military service became a regular profession, and the sacramentum, or oath of military obedience, in which the soldier identified his own interests with those of his general, became a stronger bond of allegiance than was loyalty to the state. The citizen soldier was superseded by the mercenary. Marius himself, a simpleminded soldier, without political ability, and without any atoning social qualities, was easily led by the intriguing politicians who traded on his popularity.

13. In 100 B.C. the two demagogues L. Appuleius Saturninus and C. Servilius Glaucia, aiming to carry out certain radical measures in the democratic cause, procured for this purpose the election of Marius as consul (for the sixth time), and of themselves as tribune and praetor respectively. They were both killed, however, in the outbreak caused by their revolutionary methods (99 B.C.), Marius having withdrawn his support from them, and, as the chief executive of the government, leading the senatorial forces that crushed his former associates.