Part 48

[38] Caius Fannius Strabo was quæstor in the consulship of Cn. Calpurnius Piso and M. Popilius Lænas B.C. 139, and two years after he was prætor. He served in Africa under the younger Scipio Africanus, and in Spain under Fabius Maximus Servilianus. He was the son-in-law of Lælius, surnamed Sapiens, or the Prudent. He wrote an historical work which Cicero sometimes calls a History (_Brutus_, c. 26), and sometimes Annals (_Brutus_, c. 21; _De Oratore_, ii. 67). It is unknown what period his work comprised, except that it contained the history of the Gracchi. Cicero does not speak highly of his style, but Sallustius seems to commend his veracity (Lib. i. _Historiarum_).

Tiberius would be entitled to a mural crown (muralis corona), which was the reward of the soldier who first ascended the enemy's wall. Plutarch appears to mean that Fannius also received one. Livius (26, c. 48) mentions an instance of two mural crowns being given by Scipio (afterwards Africanus) at the capture of Nova Carthago (Carthagena) in Spain.

[39] It appears that at this time the quæstors had their provinces assigned by lot, and this was the case under the Empire. (Tacitus, _Agricola_, c. 6.) The functions of a quæstor were of a civil kind, and related, in the provinces, to the administration of the public money. He was a check on the governor under whom he served when he was an honest man: sometimes the quæstor and governor agreed to wink at the peculations of each other.

[40] Caius Hostilius Mancinus was consul with Marcus Æmilius Lepidus B.C. 137. Numantia, which gave the Romans so much trouble, was situated in Old Castile on the Douro, but it is not certain what modern site corresponds to it.

[41] The Romans used the words Iberia and Hispania indifferently to denote the Spanish Peninsula. From the word Hispania the Spaniards have formed the name España, the French Espagne, and the English Spain. The river Ebro, which the Romans called Iberus, is a remnant of this old name. The Iberi originally occupied a part of Southern Gaul (the modern France) as far east as the Rhone, where they bordered upon the Ligurians. They were a different people from the Celtæ, who in the time of C. Julius Cæsar occupied one of the three great divisions of Gaul. (_Gallic War_, i. 1.) The Celtæ, at some unknown time, crossed the Pyrenees and mingling with the Iberi, formed the Celtiberi, a warlike race with whom the Romans had many wars, and over whom Tiberius, the father of Tiberius Gracchus, gained a victory. (Note, c. 1.) It is maintained by William Humboldt in his work on the original inhabitants of Spain (_Prüfung der Untersuchungen über die Urbewohner Hispaniens_) that the present Basque is a remnant of the Iberian language, which he supposes not to have been confined to Spain, but to have spread over part of Italy, the south of France, and the islands of Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica. Thucydides (vi. 2) says that the Sicani, or old inhabitants of Sicily, were Iberi who were driven from the river Sicanus in Iberia by the Ligurians.

The name Iberia was also given by the Greeks and Romans to a part of that mountainous region, commonly called the Caucasus, which lies between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. The Albani and Iberi were the two chief nations that occupied this tract; the Albani were between the Caspian Sea and the Iberi, who were their neighbours on the west. The great river Cyrus (Kur) flowed through Albania into the Caspian. Iberia was partly surrounded by the mountains of the Caucasus and it bordered on Armenia and Colchis: the river Cyrus was the chief river (Strabo, 499, ed. Casaub.). There is no evidence that these Iberi of the Caucasus were related to the western Iberi. The country was invaded by the Romans under L. Lucullus and Pompeius Magnus.

[42] The allusion is to a memorable event in the Samnite war. The consuls Spurius Postumius Albinus and Titus Veturius Calvinus B.C. 321, with their army, were caught by the Samnites in the pass called Furculæ Caudinæ, and they were compelled, in order to save themselves, to submit to the ignominy of passing under the yoke. The Roman senate rejected the terms which had been agreed on between the consuls and the officers of the army on the one side, and the Samnites on the other. It was not a treaty (foedus) as Livius shows, for such a treaty could not be made without the consent of the Populus nor without the proper religious ceremonies. (Liv. 9, c. 5.) The senate, upon the proposition of Postumius himself, sent to the Samnites all the persons who were parties to the agreement and offered to surrender them, but the Samnites would not receive them and they upbraided the Romans for want of good faith.

Mancinus also supported the proposition for his own surrender to the Numantines, and he was offered to them in due form by the officer called the Pater Patratus, but the Numantines declined accepting him. (Cicero, _De Officiis_, iii. 30.) The principle that a general could not formally make a treaty, and that all treaties required the sanction of the senate or in earlier times perhaps of the patrician body in their assembly, appears to be well established. Those who made the treaty with a Roman general might not know this constitutional rule, but the principle on which the Romans acted in such cases was sound, and the censure that has been directed against them as to their conduct in such transactions, proceeds from ignorance of the Roman constitution and of the nature of the power which a sovereign state delegates to its ministers. Delegated power or authority never authorises the persons to whom it is delegated to do an act which is inconsistent with the constitution or fundamental principles on which the sovereign power is based.

Mancinus returned to Rome and ventured to appear in the senate, but a question was raised as to his right to be there, for it was argued that a man who had been so surrendered ceased to be a citizen and could not recover his civic rights by the fiction of postliminium, as a man who had escaped from the enemy could. (Cicero, _De Oratore_, 40.) But the subtlety of the Romans found a solution of the difficulty in the case of Mancinus: there can be no surrender, if there is nobody to receive the surrender; therefore Mancinus was not surrendered; therefore he was capable of recovering his civil rights. (Cicero, _Topica_ 1.)

[43] The war of Numantia was prolonged to their disgrace, as the Romans considered it, and they at last elected Scipio consul B.C. 134, and sent him to Spain. He took Numantia after a siege of fifteen months, and totally destroyed it, B.C. 133, the same year in which his brother-in-law Tiberius Gracchus lost his life. (Velleius Paterc. ii. 4.) Caius Gracchus, the brother of Tiberius, served under Scipio at Numantia, and also Jugurtha, afterwards king of the Numidians, and Caius Marius, the conqueror of Jugurtha.

[44] Plutarch's account of the Roman public land is brief and not satisfactory. A clearer statement, which differs from Plutarch's in some respects, is given by Appian. (_Civil Wars_, i. 7, &c.) The Roman territory (Romanus Ager) was originally confined to a small circuit, as we see from the history of the early wars of Rome. Even Aricia (La Riccia) about fifteen miles south-east of Rome, was a city of the Latin confederation in the reign of Tarquinius Superbus. (Liv. 1, c. 50.) The Romans extended their territory by conquest, and they thus acquired large tracts of land in Italy, which were made the property of the state under the name of Ager Publicus. This public land was enjoyed originally by the patricians, and perhaps by them only, on payment of a certain rent to the treasury (Ærarium). The rents of the public land were a large part of the public income, and intended to defray a portion of the public expenditure. The plebs soon began to lay claim to a share in these lands, and a division of some tracts was made among the plebeians in the reign of Servius Tullius. The lands divided among the plebeians were given to them in ownership. The tracts of public land which were enjoyed by the patricians on the terms above mentioned, were considered, as they, in fact, were, public property; and the interest of the patricians in such lands was called a possession (possessio). Those who enjoyed the public land as a possessio were said to possess it (possidere), and they were called possessores, a term which often occurs in the first six books of Livius, and which Plutarch has attempted to translate by a Greek word ([Greek: ktêmatikoi]). It is likely enough that the patricians abused their right to the use of the land by not always paying the rent; as we may collect from the passages in Dionysius (_Antiq. Rom._ viii. 70, 73, ix. 51, x. 36). Their enjoyment of extensive tracts also prevented the public land from being distributed among the plebeians to the extent that they wished. The disputes between the two orders in the state, the aristocracy or nobles and the plebeians, or, as Livius generally calls them, the patres and the plebs; (the padri and the plebe of Machiavelli, _Discorsi_, &c.), about the public land, commenced with the agitation of Spurius Cassius, B.C. 486, the history of which is given by Livius in his Second Book (c. 41). The contest was continued at intervals to B.C. 366, when a law was passed which is commonly called one of the Licinian Rogations, which forbade any man to have a possession in the public lands to the amount of more than 500 jugera. This is the law to which Plutarch alludes.

The extent and difficulty of the subject of the public land makes it impossible to examine it fully in a note. I propose to treat of it at length in an appendix in a future volume.

[45] The words in Plutarch literally signify "barbarian prisons," but I have used the word ergastula, which was the Roman name, though it is a word of Greek origin, and signifies "working-places." The ergastula were places generally under ground and lighted from above: they were used both as places to work in and as lodging-places for slaves who cultivated the fields in chains. (Plinius, _N.H._ 18, c. 3; Florus, iii. 19.) They were also places of punishment for refractory slaves. The object of these places of confinement was also to prevent slaves from running away, and rising in insurrection. The slaves were placed at night in separate cells to prevent all communication between them. When the slaves broke out in rebellion in Sicily under Eunus, who is mentioned by Plutarch (Sulla, c. 36), the ergastula were broken open, and a servile army of above sixty thousand men was raised. The Roman master had full power over his slave, who was merely viewed as an animal; and these ergastula, being in the country and out of sight, would give a cruel master full opportunity of exercising his tyranny. They were abolished by the Emperor Hadrian (Spartianus, _Hadrianus_, 18).

[46] C. Lælius, the father, was an intimate friend of Scipio Africanus the Elder. C. Lælius, the son, the Wise or the Prudent, was also an intimate friend of the younger Africanus. Cicero's treatise on Friendship is entitled Lælius in honour of Lælius the Prudent.

[47] Tiberius Gracchus was elected Tribune B.C. 133, and he lost his life the same year.

[48] Cicero (_Brutus_, c. 27) calls the Greek Diophanes a teacher of Tiberius Gracchus. Blossius is mentioned by Cicero (_Lælius_, c. 11) as one of those who urged Tiberius to his measures of reform. Antipater of Tarsus was a Stoic. The two sons of Cornelia had a learned education and were acquainted with the language and philosophy of the Greeks, and it is probable that the moral and political speculations with which they thus became familiar, and their associating with Greeks, had considerable influence on their political opinions. Tiberius Gracchus the father was also well enough acquainted with Greek to speak the language. His oration to the Rhodians was spoken in Greek.

[49] It does not seem certain what Postumius is intended. Sp. Postumius Albinus Magnus was consul B.C. 148, and is supposed by Meyer (_Orat. Rom. Fragmenta_, 197) to be the orator alluded to by Cicero (_Brutus_, 25). But this Postumius was too old to be a rival of Gracchus. Another of the same name was consul B.C. 110, and conducted the war against Jugurtha unsuccessfully; but he was perhaps too young to be a rival of Gracchus. (Cicero, _Brutus_, 34.)

[50] This was P. Licinius Crassus Mucianus Dives, the son of P. Mucius Scævola, and the adopted son of P. Licinius Crassus Dives, as appears from Cicero (_Academ._ 2, c. 5), who mentions him with his brother P. Scævola as one of the advisers of Tiberius Gracchus in his legislation. Crassus was consul with L. Valerius Flaccus B.C. 131. He was a soldier, a lawyer, and an orator. He lost his life in the war against Aristonikus in the Roman province of Asia B.C. 131. It is remarked that he was the first pontifex maximus who went beyond the limits of Italy, for he was consul and pontifex maximus when he went to carry on the war against Aristonikus. (Livius, _Epitome_, 59.) The pontifex maximus, as the head of religion, had important duties which required his presence at Rome.

[51] The illustrious family of the Scævolæ produced many orators and jurists. This Scævola was P. Mucius Scævola, the brother of P. Licinius Crassus Mucianus. He was consul B.C. 133, the year in which Tiberius Gracchus attempted his reform. He attained the dignity of pontifex maximus in B.C. 131 on his brother's death. Scævola was probably a timid man. Cicero states that his brother openly favoured the measures of Tiberius; and Scævola was suspected of doing so. After the death of Tiberius he approved of the conduct of Scipio Nasica, who was the active mover in this affair, and assisted in drawing up several decrees of the Senate in justification of the measure and even in commendation of it. (Cicero _Pro Domo_, c. 34; _Pro Plancio_, 36.) He was a great orator, but his chief merit was as a jurist. He was the father of a son still more distinguished as a jurist, Quintus Mucius Scævola, who also became pontifex maximus, and was one of the teachers of Cicero. He is considered to be one of those who laid the foundations of Roman law and formed it into a science (_Dig._ 1, tit. 2, s. 2). Quintus Mucius Scævola, commonly called the augur, also a distinguished jurist, was a cousin of P. Mucius Scævola, the pontifex, and a teacher of Cicero before Cicero became a hearer of the pontifex.

[52] The eloquence of Tiberius Gracchus is commemorated by Cicero (_Brutus_, c. 27), who had read his orations. He describes them as not sufficiently ornate in expression, but as acute and full of judgment. The specimens of the orations of Tiberius (c. 9. 15) and those in Appian (_Civil Wars_, 9. 15) fully bear out the opinion of Cicero as to his acuteness. Some German writers assert that these speeches in Plutarch are either fabricated by him or taken from other writers; but assertions like these, which are not founded on evidence, are good for nothing. Plutarch gives the speeches as genuine: at least he believes them to be so, and therefore he did not fabricate them. And it is not likely that any body else did. These two fragments (c. 9. 15) bear no resemblance to the style of most writers who have fabricated speeches. They are in a genuine Roman style. If any man could fabricate them, it was Livius, and Plutarch may have taken them from him.

[53] The same expression occurs in Horace (1 _Carm._ 1), which there also applies to the Romans, and not to the gods, as some suppose.

[54] Marcus Octavius, who was one of the tribuni plebis B.C. 133, was a descendant of Cneius Octavius, quæstor B.C. 230. Caius Octavius, better known as Caius Julius Cæsar Octavianus and as the Emperor Augustus, was a descendant of Caius the second son of Cneius. Cicero, whose opinion about the Gracchi changed with the changed circumstances of his own life, commends the opposition of Marcus Octavius to the measures of Gracchus. (_Brutus_, c. 25.) He also says that Octavius was a good speaker.

The institution of the tribuni plebis is one of the most important events in the history of Rome, and the struggle between the plebeians headed by their tribunes, and the nobility, is the development of the constitutional history of Rome. Though there were tribunes in the kingly period, the establishment of the tribuni plebis as the guardians of the plebs is properly referred to the year B.C. 494, when the plebs seceded to the Mons Sacer or the Sacred Mount. On this occasion the patricians consented to the election of two tribunes from the plebs. (Livius, 2, c. 33: compare Livius, 2, 56. 58.) The number was afterwards increased to ten, and this number continued unaltered. Only a plebeian could be elected tribune. The persons of the tribunes were declared to be sacred (sacrosancti). Their powers were originally limited, as above stated, to the protection of the rights of the plebs and of the individuals of the plebeian body against the oppression of the patrician magistrates. It is not possible within the compass of a note to trace the history of the gradual increase of the tribunitian power (tribunitia potestas): such a subject is a large chapter in the history of Rome. Incidental notices often appear in Plutarch's Lives, which will help a reader to form a general notion of the nature of the magistracy, and the effect which it had on the development of the Roman constitution. The article Tribuni in Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities gives an outline of the functions of the tribuni plebis.

Very soon after the institution of the tribunate, the nobles learned the art of destroying the power of the college of tribunes by gaining over one or more of the members; for, as Plutarch states, the opposition (intercessio) of a single tribune rendered the rest of his colleagues powerless.

[55] As this is the first time that I have used this word, it requires explanation. The origin of the Roman state is a matter involved in great obscurity; but its history after the expulsion of the kings B.C. 509 is the history of a struggle between a class of nobles, an aristocracy, and the people. The old nobility of Rome were the patricians, whom Livius calls indifferently patres (father) and patricii. In his early History patres and plebs are opposed to one another, as we should now oppose the terms nobles or aristocracy, and commonalty or people; not that nobles and aristocracy are among us exactly equivalent, but in the history of Rome there is no distinction between them. Livius frequently uses the term patres and plebs as comprehending all the Roman citizens (ii. 33). The word populus was originally and properly not the people in our sense; it signified the superior and privileged class and was equivalent to patricians. The plebs were originally not a part of the populus. In later times the word populus was often used loosely to express generally the Roman people, and the style and title of the Roman state was Senatus Populusque Romanus--The Senate and the Roman populus, which term populus in the later republic certainly included the plebs, though the plebs is still spoken of as a class. As the plebeians gradually obtained access to the higher honours of the state and to the consulship by a law of Licinius Stolo B.C. 366, a new class of nobles was formed out of those persons who had enjoyed those honours and out of their descendants. This class was called nobiles by the Romans; the word nobilitas denoted the rank or title of the class, but it was also used like our word nobility to express the body of nobiles. Livius uses this term even in the earlier books of his History, but perhaps not with strict correctness, for in some cases at least he makes the term nobility equivalent to the patricians. He wrote in the reign of Augustus, and he has not always applied his terms in the earlier periods with perfect accuracy. Still we may trace the meaning of political terms in the Roman writers with great clearness, for no nation ever stuck more closely to old forms and expressions, and there is a wonderful precision in the use of political terms by Roman writers of all ages and of all classes. The name patricians still existed after the term nobilis was introduced: a noble might be either a patrician or a plebeian, but the distinction was well understood between an old patrician family and a plebeian family, however distinguished the plebeian family might become. Under the Emperors it was not uncommon for them to promote a man to the rank of patrician for eminent services, which under the monarchy was equivalent to the conferring of a title of dignity in modern times, and nothing more. (Tacit. _Ann._ xi. 25.)

In Cicero we find the aristocratical order often spoken of as the optimates (the class of the best), a term which corresponds to the Greek aristi ([Greek: aristoi]), whence we have the word aristocracy, which, however, the early Greek writers, at least, only used to express a form of government and not a class of persons. Cicero on one occasion (_Pro P. Sestio_, c. 45) attempts to give to the word optimates a much wider signification; to make it comprehend all good and honest people: but this is a mere piece of rhetoric. When a poor plebeian heard the optimates spoken of, he never imagined that it was intended to place him among them, were he as honest as the best man among the optimates. Cicero also says the populares were those who merely spoke and acted to please the multitude; which shows that populus must now have changed its meaning: the optimates were those who wished to act so as to get the approbation of all honest men.