Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 2.djvu/305

GRACCHUS. of the aristocracy watched with fear and jealousy the career of Tiberius, whose popularity was gain- ing fresh strength every day. But the sympathy of Tiberius with the people was excited much more by its distress than by the demonstrations of its favour. His brother Caius related in some of his works, that Tiberius, on his march to Spain, in B. c. 137, as he was passing through Etruria, observed with grief and indigna- tion the deserted state of that fertile country ; thousands of foreign slaves in chains were employed in cultivating the land and tending the flocks upon the immense estates of the wealthy, while the poorer classes of Roman citizens, who were thus thrown out of employment, had scarcely their daily bread or a clod of earth to call their own. He is said to have been roused through that circumstance to exert himself in endeavouring to remedy this evil. C. Laelius had, before him entertained the thought of interfering, but, for want of courage, had despaired of success. Had the Licinian law, which regulated the amount of public land which a person might occupy, and the number of cattle he might keep on the public pastures, been observed, such a state of things could never have arisen. If Tiberius had wished to enforce obedience to the letter of that law, he would have acted with perfect justice, and no one could have censured him for it, but the greedy aristocracy, who had enriched themselves by the violation of the law, would have moved heaven and earth to prevent such a measure. The state of things, moreover, had, by a long-continued neglect of the law, become so complicated, that a renewal of the Licinian law, without any modili- cation, would have been unfair towards a large class of the occupiers of public land, and it required the greatest care to act in the affair with prudence and moderation, and in a manner equitable and satis- factory towards all parties. Large tracts of public land had passed from father to son, and no one ever seems to have thought of the possibility of their being reclaimed by the state. Through this feeling of security many persons had erected buildings on their possessions, or had otherwise laid out large sums of money upon them ; many also, who now possessed more than the five hundred jugera allowed by the Licinian law, had acquired either the whole or part of their possession by purchase, and were accustomed to look upon it as real property, although a moment's consideration would have con- vinced them that they were only precarious tenants of the republic, which might at any time claim its right of ownership. Amid these clashing interests, Tib. Gracchus determined to remedy the evil by endeavouring to create an industrious middle class of agriculturists, and to put a check upon the unbounded avarice of the aristocracy, whose covetousness, combined with the disasters of the second Punic war, had com- pletely destroyed the middle class of small land- owners. With this view, he oifered himself as a candidate for the tribuneship, and obtained it for the year b. c. 133. It should be observed, that at this period the tribunes were elected in the month of June, the harvest time in Italy, but they did not enter upon their office till the 10th of December. The people appear to have anticipated that Gracchus was going to undertake something on their behalf, for plaairds were seen in all parts of the city calling upon him to protect them ; but GRACCHUS. 291 he felt that his work was too serious and import- ant to be undertaken without the advice and assistance of others. His Greek friends, Diophanes and Blossius, and his mother, Cornelia, urged liim on ; and he was supported by the counsel of the most eminent men of the time, such as App. Clau- dius, his father-in-law, the consul and great jurist, Mucius Scaevola, and Crassus, the pontifex maxi- mus, all of whom were probably as much losers by the measures which Gracchus was going to bring forward as the Scipios and others who opposed him. The first bill which he brought, before the people proposed, that the agrarian law of Licinius, which had in fact never been abolished, should be renewed and enforced, with this modification, that besides the 500 jugera allowed by that law, any one might possess 250 jugera of the public land for each of his sons. This clause, however, seems to have been limited to two ; so that a father of two sons might occupy 1 000 jugera of public land. The surplus was to be taken from them and distri- buted in small farms among the poor citizens. The business of measuring and distributing the land Was to be entrusted to triumvirs, who were to be elected as a permanent magistracy. He further enacted, that in future the possession of public land should not be transferred by sale or purchase, in order that the wealthy might not be able gra- dually to acquire again more land than the law allowed. In the case of buildings erected on land which was to be thus given up, the possessors Avere to be indemnified by a sum of money determined by a fair valuation of the buildings. There re- mains only one point in this agrarian law, for which the legislator is open to censure, not indeed on the ground of injustice, but merely on that of unfairness. A considerable, though probably not a very great number of those who had to give up a portion of their possessions, had acquired either the whole or a part by purchase ; and as they had to give up their surplus, like those who had not paid for their land, fhose men were positive losers, just as much as if Gracchus had taken from them their private property. To remove all complaints on this ground, Gracchus ought to have added a clause, that such persons should receive from the public treasury the sums for which they had bona fide purchased the land, or else that the land thus purchased should not come within the law, and - should be treated as private property, with which the law had nothing to do. The state ought, at all events, to have made this sacrifice. The opposition of the aristocracy would not indeed have been silenced by such a measure, but there would cer- tainly have been no ground for that bitter exas- peration which Gracchus now called forth. It is ever to be lamented that Gracchus did not intro- duce into his law a clause of that description. The faction of the opposition, consisting of the senate and the aristocracy, was not numerous, but violent in the highest degree, and the thousands who were to be benefited by the measure were ready to support Gracchus at any risk ; the issue of the struggle, therefore, could not be doubtful, and it would have been hopeless to oppose the agrarian law in the ordinary constitutional way, for as soon as the bill was passed by the tribes, it became law, the sanction of the senate not being required. The senatorial party, therefore, re- sorted to intrigues. A noble specimen of the deeply-felt and impressive eloquence with which u 2