CHAPTER XIII.

TIBERIUS SEMPRONIUS GRACCHUS.

B.C. 133.

Q. MUMMIUS, or Mucius as Plutarch names him, was elected tribune in the place of Octavius, and the law of Gracchus was carried. The three commissioners, or Triumviri, elected to execute the law were Tiberius Gracchus, his father-in-law Appius Claudius, and his younger brother Caius Gracchus. The election of the two brothers to such an important office together with the father-in-law of Tiberius proves that for the moment the party of Gracchus was all-powerful. As to Caius, Plutarch says that he was in Scipio's army before Numantia, and therefore he was elected in his absence. He was also a very young man, and not so fit for the office of land commissioner as many others. But the people were afraid that the law would not be executed unless the office of commissioner was altogether in the family of Gracchus. Tiberius was elated with his victory. Crowds accompanied him to his house to do honour to the man who was more than the founder of a state or of a single people: he was the regenerator of the Italian race. Those who had flocked to Rome to support Gracchus returned to the country well pleased with the defeat of their enemies; but the defeated party consoled themselves with the prospect of having their revenge when Tiberius again became a private man.

The Senate had the administration of the Roman state, and the control over all the expenditure. They showed their spite to Tiberius by even refusing to allow him a tent at the public cost, while he was discharging his office of commissioner,

and on the motion of P. Scipio Nasica, who was himself a large possessor of Public Land and an enemy of Gracchus, they gave him only about six sestertii a day for his expenses. The hostility between the nobles and the people was increased by an event which happened at this time. A friend of Tiberius died suddenly, and as suspicious marks appeared on his body, it was given out and the people believed that the man had been poisoned, and, as we must assume, because he was a friend of Tiberius. The story is very lamely told, nor is it explained why a man, whose name Plutarch has not taken the trouble to record, should have been selected as the victim of the vengeance of the nobility. But the rumour may be a truth, though the poisoning may not, and Tiberius took advantage of the popular belief to change his dress, as the Romans expressed it, or to appear in mourning, in order to excite the people still more. He presented his children to them, and begged they would protect them and their mother, for he thought that his life was no longer safe.

In this year died Attalus, the third of the name and the last king of Pergamum. He had no children, and he bequeathed his kingdom to the Romans. Attalus was rich, and his bequest was a favourable opportunity for Gracchus to ingratiate himself still more with the poor. He promulgated, that is in the Roman sense, he gave formal notice of a law for the distribution of the money of Attalus, and perhaps also the produce of the sale of his valuables among those who had assignments of land, in order to enable them to stock their little farms. He also declared that the Senate had no right to decide about the cities included within the kingdom of Attalus, but that he would bring the matter before the assembly of the people. Such an absurd proposal, if it was seriously made, must have disgusted every sensible man, for the Senate alone had the power of dealing with the gift of Attalus; and the organization of a new acquisition could not be effectually made by an ignorant popular assembly voting for a bill laid before them, which from the very nature of the case they must either accept altogether or reject, for discussion in a popular assembly is impossible. However, we know nothing more of this scheme than the intention of Gracchus.

Livy's Epitome, which is obscure, seems to state that the proposal of Tiberius as to the money of Attalus was to distribute the king's wealth among those who could not have any land, for there was not enough for all the claimants; or, the meaning may be, that as there was not land enough to satisfy even those who received some of it, the deficiency in their expectations might be made up by a sum of money. To give money to the poor who received grants of land was consistent, for the bare gift of land is not worth much; but to seek popular favour by giving poor voters a sum of money out of the treasury would be one of the silliest and meanest of political stratagems.

Tiberius had enough to do to defend himself in the Senate. Q. Pompeius, probably the consul of B.c. 141, threatened him with a prosecution when his tribunate should be ended, and he declared that Eudemus of Pergamum, who had brought the will of Attalus to Rome, had given Gracchus a diadem and a purple robe out of the king's household stuff; a sufficient proof that Gracchus designed to make himself king. This kind of insinuation was a usual way of destroying the influence of a popular leader. It ruined Spurius Cassius and T. Manlius. In the history of the Florentine republic we find the same thing: to charge a man with a design of usurping power is the easiest way, says Machiavelli, to ruin his popularity in a republic. Q. Metellus Macedonicus, the consul of B.C. 143, reproached Tiberius with being accompanied by needy citizens with torches when he came home at night. The charge is significant enough. A crowd of citizens accompanying a tribune on his way home in a city where there was no light, except the blazing torches which a rabble carried, was certainly contrary to good order and likely to alarm quiet people. T. Annius Luscus, who had been consul in B.c. 153, attacked Gracchus in the Senate on a point, where he had no defence, the deposition of his fellow-tribune M. Octavius. Tiberius brought the matter before the assembly of the people with the view, we must suppose, of making some charge against Annius and punishing him in some way. Annius, who was no match for his opponent in talking, asked Tiberius to answer a few questions before he

made his charge. The question of Annius to Tiberius was this: "If you intend to deprive me of my rank and disgrace me, and I appeal to one of your brother tribunes, and he shall come to my aid, and you shall then fall into a passion, will you deprive him of his office?" This question, to which it was not possible to give a direct answer, struck Gracchus dumb. He dismissed the meeting and went no further in the matter against Annius. He saw that the deposition of Octavius had offended the people as well as the Senate, and he took occasion to justify himself in a public address.

Part of Gracchus' speech is preserved by Plutarch. It is Plutarch's own composition, as some assume, who set little value on Plutarch's historical accuracy, and even less than is due. If Plutarch wanted a speech to ornament his life of Tiberius, he could find one ready to his hand in the tribune's extant orations, and a better speech than he could make. I do not think that Plutarch would find it so easy to fabricate a Roman as a Greek oration; and this fragment both in the matter and the style is above Plutarch's skill. Tiberius argued "that a tribune was sacred and inviolate only because he was dedicated to the people and was the guardian of the people. If then a tribune should deviate from his duty and wrong the people, abridge their power and deprive them of the opportunity of voting, he had by his own act deprived himself of his rank by not fulfilling the conditions on which he received it. Now we must consider a tribune to be still a tribune, though he should dig down the Capitol and burn the naval arsenal. If he should commit such excesses as these, he is a bad tribune; but if he should attempt to deprive the people of their power, he is not a tribune at all. And is it not a monstrous thing if a tribune shall have power to order a consul to be put in prison, and the people shall not be able to deprive a tribune of his power when he is using it against the people? for both tribune and consul are equally chosen by the people. Now the kingly office, besides comprehending within it all civil power, is consecrated to the divinity by the discharge of the ceremonials of religion; and yet the state ejected Tarquinius for his wrong doing, and for the violence of one man the antient power which established

Rome was overthrown. And what is there at Rome so sacred, so venerated as the virgins who guard the everburning fire? but if any of them offends, she is buried alive; for when they sin against the gods, they no longer retain that inviolable sanctity which they have by being devoted to the gods. In like manner, neither has a tribune, when he is wronging the people, any right to retain the inviolable character which he receives from the people, for he is destroying the very power which is the origin of his own power. And indeed if he has legally received the tribunician power by the votes of a majority of the tribes, how is it that he cannot even still more legally be deposed by the vote of all the tribes? Now nothing is so sacred and inviolable as things dedicated to the gods; but yet no one has ever hindered the people from using such things, moving them and changing their places as they please. It is therefore legal for the people to transfer the tribunate as a consecrated thing from one man to another. And that the tribunate is not an inviolable thing nor an office of which a man cannot be divested, is clear from this, that many magistrates have abdicated their office and prayed to be excused from it of their own free will." This is an ingenious defence of the principle that all political power comes from and is in those for whose use it is exercised; that the people delegate power by electing a man to an office, and that they can deprive him of the power by the same way in which it was delegated, whenever they shall think proper. But the question whether the man has used his delegated power right or wrong is quite beside the matter; for there is by the supposition no way of ascertaining, while he holds his office, whether he has used his power right or wrong except by the people expressing their opinion by a When the vote removes him from his office, it is true that it also indirectly condemns him; but the direct judgment is the removal from office at the pleasure of the people, and Gracchus maintained that this could be done, if the people who elected a man to an office did not think that he was using his authority rightly. The chief difficulty for Gracchus who was addressing Romans was in dealing with the religious character of the tribunes' office, and he evades

vote.