Chapter 8 — The Gracchan Revolution

CHAPTER VIII

The Gracchan Revolution

The middle of the second century B.C. found Rome in a ferment of discontent. Under the leadership of the Philhellene aristocracy, the state had engaged in entangling alliances throughout Greece and the East, which were now compelling Rome to decide whether she would endure daily insults as a “friend” or assume control. She chose the second alternative, though with many misgivings; for the senate dreaded the military power that empire necessitated, and the democratic leaders feared the power and prestige that would accrue to the senate from provincial administration. In a word, questions of foreign policy [OCR unclear:...c simplgsf rffftrra rr%\\(\ nitf N* Ht«/Tj*«j^i >.]. The irritating questions of government threatened to divide Rome into hostile factions.

By this time, too, the very stock of Rome had begun to change, not through immigration but through the accretion of manumitted slaves and war captives. Doubtless the jibe of Aemilianus overshot the fact when he claimed that he had led to Rome in chains the hordes that now supported the revolutionary bills of Gracchus. But the phrase would have passed as pointless had there not been much truth in it. That reform through orderly compromise now gave way to revolution through bloodshed is largely due to the displacement of real Italic peoples by men of Oriental, Punic, and Iberian stock.

Finally, the evil consequences of the over-benevolent leasing system now began to lower over the whole land. The leaseholders had soon gained possession of all vacant lands, thereby precluding new distributions to a growing generation. But more than that, holding an advantage over the settlers who tried to work their plots by precarious hand-to-mouth methods, they even encroached upon and gained possession of many such holdings. For the sixty years before the Gracchan reforms, during a period when war casualties counted for little, the citizen population of Rome increased not at all. Apparently the peasantry lost courage and withdrew to the provinces or into the uncounted riffraff of the cities.

It was a young aristocrat, Tiberius Gracchus,* the friend and associate of a group of moderates who read Stoic philosophy at leisure moments, who had the courage and faith to attempt agrarian reforms that seemed to promise social and political amelioration. He had observed, while traveling through Etruria, that the plantation system fed upon slavery, which he, more keenly visioned than his contemporaries, held to be an evil in itself. In speeches, fragments of which have survived, he argued that such a system could not provide the strong body of yeomen needed by the army of a growing state. But he went further and appealed to humanitarian methods as well; and, adopting a social theory then gaining support among Greek publicists, he assumed that the state owed to its citizens, in return for loyal services, a parcel of land on which they might earn a livelihood. His proposal was to reclaim the public lands that were held contrary to the quantitative restrictions of the old Licinian law and to distribute these in small lots to Roman citizens as inalienable leaseholds at low rentals.

* The chief accounts are found in Appian, B.C. I, 1–26, and Plutarch’s lives of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus. Greenidge and Clay, Sources for Roman History, have a convenient collection of most of the other ancient references. The introductory chapters in Greenidge, A History of Rome, give an admirable review of social and economic conditions. His chapters on the Gracchi, and those of Heitland, The Roman Republic, II, are the best surveys of the Gracchan reforms. For discussion of the sources, see Fowler in Eng. Hist. Rev., 1905; E. Meyer, Kleine Schriften, p. 383; and Cardinali, Studi Graccani, 1912. The fragments of the Gracchan speeches are collected in Meyer, Orat. Rom. Frag.

The senators discussed the bill and rejected it. They argued the injustice of reasserting a claim to lands that the state had overlooked for generations, that had in fact been improved at no little expense by the holders, and had to some extent even passed by testament or purchase to “widows and orphans,” who seem somehow even then to have accumulated dubious titles. They also reminded the Italian peoples who had been admitted to such lands that, if the Gracchan measures were adopted, they would probably lose all they possessed to Roman citizens.

Tiberius, balked by the senate, revived the long-dormant provision of the constitution of 287, which permitted a referendum* to the plebeian assembly on legislative proposals. When, however, he called for a vote, a fellow tribune, Octavius, as was his legal right, interposed a veto. Tiberius, refusing to be blocked, then proposed a measure legalizing the “recall” of tribunes who acted contrary to the wishes of their constituents. The measure passed amid cries and charges of rebellion. Forced through as the measure was without adequate constitutional justification, the act was near rebellion, and many there were who later revived the precedent. But Tiberius’ instinct was right. The tribune was not originally intended to be a magistrate of the state, but rather an advocate and patron of a class or of individuals, and as such subservient to the needs of his constituency. Furthermore, the enlargement of the board of tribunes to the unwieldy number of ten had not been intended to provide division within the board, but only to extend its capacity for action over a large area. After tribunes began to sell their services to checkmate each other, the original purpose of the board was defeated, and only by reducing its number virtually or actually to one could its efficiency be restored; that, at least, the introduction of the “recall” would accomplish. In any case, the assembly had been empowered by the constitution of 287 to try whatever legislative experiment it might desire, though it was in duty bound to employ less abridged methods than Tiberius used on this occasion.

* F. F. Abbott, “The Referendum and Recall among the Ancient Romans,” Sewanee Review, 1915. The theory of the recall was again successfully applied in Cicero’s day: Asconius, In Cornelianum, ed. Kiess., p. 64.

Thus, by revamping the machinery of popular sovereignty, Tiberius passed his drastic agrarian law, which had a judicial commission elected with powers to examine and adjudge titles and to distribute the lots. The senate still attempted to impede the execution of the law and, indeed, after the death of Tiberius, succeeded in nullifying the powers of the commission. But some of the boundary stones erected by it are still in existence, and if Mommsen’s contention is correct that an increase of 73,000* names on Rome’s census list of the year 125 B.C. betokens an increase of approximately that many landholders, the committee must have worked with great success. Fate has generously spared a milestone** erected by the consul Popilius, the chief opponent of Tiberius, on which he had inscribed the surprising record: “I first compelled the grazers to give back the public land to tillers.” One is almost tempted to hazard a guess that some sarcastic workman inserted the line for amusement. But perhaps Popilius was, after all, a shrewd politician who knew when to steer with the wind.

* See Mommsen, Rom. Hist. III, 85; Beloch, Die Bevölkerung, p. 308, questions this interpretation. The riddle cannot be solved so long as we do not know precisely the scope of the census list. Against Mommsen’s view, it has been objected that the land lots were leased and not given outright, and that therefore possession of them did not convey citizenship of full rank. This, however, is hardly valid. Gracchus was primarily interested in extending a sound body of full citizens capable of army service and may well have inserted a clause in his law bestowing fullest citizenship upon his colonists.

** A milestone in Lucania on the new military road leading from Capua to Sicily. The sentence reads: Eideroque primus fecei ut de agro poplico aratoribus cederent paastores. C.I.L. I, 551.

Tiberius’ attempt to secure reelection resulted in a riot in which he was killed, and his work soon came to a standstill. His brother Gaius, however, reached the same office in 124 and continued the work with a widely expanded program. Gaius Gracchus is indeed still an enigma to us, since the documents upon which our later sources rest were all written in the bitterest spirit of partisanship, whether for or against the tribune. From the fragments of his speeches* quoted verbatim, though often excerpted with evil intent, it is clear that he sometimes acted in the spirit of a party leader who could, when need arose, propose measures of general value in order to gain adherents and strengthen his bloc. That he even struck at his opponents in a purely vindictive manner seems demonstrable from his own words. These facts, however, must not be allowed to weigh seriously in the judgment of his main program or in the interpretation of doubtful points. In pagan Rome, not yet very far from the age of the vendetta, vindictiveness under the sting of a brother’s murder was accepted as reasonable and considered quite compatible with lofty ideals. The only question that concerns us at present is whether the pursuit of vengeance blurred the vision or misdirected the ultimate blow when the great task of reform called for completion. And it must be admitted that no legislative act of his actually passed that was not fully justified from the point of view of his program.

* Meyer, Orat. Rom. Frag., pp. 224 ff.

As for the intrusion of party politics, we are seldom able to say what measures were merely means to an end, intended to be annulled or neutralized after the goal was reached. The monthly distribution of corn to the poor at half price was cited by his opponents as a piece of bribery. This may be correct. But it is also possible that Gaius instituted this measure by way of temporary relief [OCR unclear: yser^TonVmif^ ^^ --tttTiT&ctlfc “ToiSfief tlTf poor in t! rybjjr^ further ^lOf^I^v veoiBrp for work] in the numerous enterprises in which he employed the urban laborers. It is, however, not unlikely that this was a frank experiment in state socialism, suggested perhaps by his Stoic mentor.* We know that the theory that the state owed its poor a livelihood had become current in the East in the dreary days of the third century, when Greece was slowly dwindling to futility. And if Gracchus was touched with such humanitarian ideas, [OCR unclear: th^ full of wheat from SidhL, which bdonged to the Pwy^*. 7 hey had but to vflfl I rtktnTnffSnBTmSSeRSlof tfiar own property. Why shoul*: ) hui|g|2jAflL&^ ^^ cision to open the lay in tficy own hands?]

* Köhler, Sitz. Akad. Berlin, 1898, p. 841; Wilamowitz, ibid., 1904, p. 917; Rostowzew, art. frumentum in Pauly-Wissowa, VII, 139. The Stoic philosopher Blossius, the teacher and companion of the Gracchi, seems to play the same role of social reformer in connection with his pupils that Sphaerus did, who a century before encouraged Cleomenes to divide all property in Sparta. The Gracchi might also have learned of such movements in Greece from their personal conversations with Polybius, who was deeply interested in the career of the strange Spartan king. Cicero, De Off. II, 80, implies that the Gracchi followed the example of the Spartan kings: ex eo tempore tantae discordiae secutae sunt.

The experiment, to be sure, led to disastrous results, both in neutralizing the success of the Gracchan colonial schemes and, since no one later dared oppose the charity, in a continued pauperization of the Roman populace. But the first experimenters in social legislation readily fall into errors, and recent experience has proved that states which have to face the exigencies of strenuous military duties take short cuts to the winning of a contented and well-fed populace, regardless of the future consequences to the general morale.

Two other measures are usually credited to partisan motives: the transfer of jury service from the senators to the men of wealth, the equites,* and the displacement of the native tax collectors in the province of Asia by Roman publicans who gathered the dues by contract. A fragment of a speech by Gracchus proves clearly that, in the former case, the author fully realized that it would create a division between the nobility and the knights, as of course it did. The significant political consequence of the law which Diodorus** and other critics of Gracchus emphasize—namely, its effect in placing provincial governors at the mercy of the publicans—could hardly have been contemplated or indeed foreseen at the time of its passage, since that far-distant result was made possible only by the slowly accumulated effects of the contract law.

Gaius clearly had in view the curtailment of senatorial power, but if we bear in mind his peculiar faith in businessmen and business methods, we can readily believe that Gaius desired most of all to elevate that class [OCR unclear: ^f^^ Ky fflg^ IQIT^ o| ^mr.nf r..o.w.w^,[^nn ypH ^idcratc:ncc tnc icy oi istant irrau] and its goodwill and special experience in public affairs. And though the record this class afterward made as jurymen probably fell below his expectations, there is no evidence to show that it performed these services with less honesty and efficiency than the senators.

* Cic., De Leg. III, 9; Diodorus, XXXVII, 9.

** Diodorus, XXXV, 25.

The collection of Asiatic tithes by contract, though, like all work done by political contracts, it [OCR unclear:... h corruption], brought in a larger and more [OCR unclear:...] revenue than collection by local authorities [OCR unclear:... to watch]. [OCR unclear: such as the empire t...] tire of alluding to the baneful influence of the contract system that is still so largely used in modern democracies, and they stand quite aghast before the fact that the largest of democracies still jogs along without so much as a budget. To Gaius Gracchus, the introduction of the contract was, of course, a step toward efficiency. He found that the tribute of Asia, instituted a few years before, was dwindling, partly because some districts were incapable of financial administration, partly because the most capable of them would shirk the burden under any pretext. If he knew—as any Roman of experience must have known from complaints against the publicans engaged in Italy—that the companies would occasionally fall into the temptation to defraud and extort moneys, nevertheless he had reason to trust in the supervision of the provincial governor or in the Roman tribune to bring the guilty to punishment. At any rate, both these measures reveal in Gracchus a faith and deep interest in the possessors of wealth, a trait that we have discovered some trace of in Appius Claudius and Flaminius, but hardly elsewhere.

It was the same sympathy with the commercial classes that led Gaius to conceive of a new class of colonies,* nothing less than seaport colonies—not this time simply to protect landing places against incursions, but to encourage Mediterranean commerce. When in 146 the great port of Carthage was destroyed, the senate had been so negligent of commercial interests as to leave the new province of Africa dependent upon non-Roman ports like Utica for ingress and egress. This deficiency Gracchus now proposed to remedy by planting a citizen colony at Carthage. Tarentum also, partly ruined by the Punic War, was to have a colony of picked citizens who might develop the port to its old-time splendor. The need here was great, since a large part of the recently allotted lands lay in southern Italy. A third colony of selected citizens was sent to Scylacium, opposite Vibo, perhaps in response to the advice of merchants who preferred to have a portage there rather than risk the troublesome sail around through the Straits of Messana. It will be remembered that Rome still found it practicable to get much of its merchandise by land transport all the way from Puteoli. In all these measures the tribune may have had the advice of the best business intelligence, since in his vast enterprises he constantly came in contact with men of large affairs.

* Plut., C. Gracch. 6, 8, 10; App., B.C. I, 23; Livy, Epit. 60; Vell. II, 7. See Hardy, Six Roman Laws, p. 73. Gracchus’ policy in these colonial foundations is well treated in Abbott, “The Colonizing Policy of the Romans,” Class. Phil., 1915, 368.

The proposal upon which the young enthusiast went down to defeat—a proposal offering mere justice without any material benefit to the voter—was a bill giving citizenship to all possessors of Latin rights and Latinitas to all other Italians. His enemies saw in this merely a scheme to create a new electorate bound to him alone, though it is difficult to see why he should put in jeopardy his present support for a new constituency if power was his object. His purpose in this measure was partly to place the Italians in a fair position with reference to the division of the public lands, partly also to protect them against the abuse of irresponsible Roman officials. Moreover, his outspoken interest in [OCR unclear:... to draw soldiers for the army] and his dislike for the non-Roman class that threatened to dominate the city justify the belief that he also saw in the measure great advantages for Rome. The bill, however, only raised unfulfilled hopes in the Italians, and its defeat hastened on the Social War.

The Gracchan reforms did not save Rome from the deserved consequences of her neglect. The defeated measures stayed obstructed; those that passed were either modified by the senate or administered with so little of the spirit of the author that their benefits were largely neutralized and their evils exaggerated. The actual results belied all hopes and intentions. The agrarian laws doubtless improved central Italy and relieved Rome temporarily; but, left incomplete, they sowed the seeds of the Social War, whereas the continuation of the corn doles soon brought the city to a worse condition than before. The equites were recognized in affairs of state, and this should have broadened the economic outlook of Roman statesmanship. Unfortunately, when met and obstructed at every turn by the jealousy of the old aristocracy, they degenerated into a selfish faction satisfied to become parasites of the financial bureau, growing fat upon whatever capitalistic investments the new contract system threw in their way. The reintroduction of the principle of popular sovereignty was excusable only if the electorate could have been reformed as the Gracchi intended. Without that reform, the Roman populace was coming to be incapable of self-government, not to speak of the government of a world. And the breach in the constitution produced by the attempt could not readily be healed when once the populace had thus recovered the machinery that made them all-powerful. The rehabilitation of the plebeian assembly therefore led directly to the civil wars and the Caesarian autocracy.

Of immediate interest to economists as a result of these contests are the elevation of the capitalist-mercantile class to a position of power in the state and in its financial enterprises; the closing of Italian lands for colonization, which directed capital into other channels; and the acceptance of the policy of state charity for the poor of Rome, which placed industry in the city at a discount for all time.

CHAPTER VIII

THE GRACCHAN REVOLUTION

The middle of the second century B.C. found Rome in a ferment of discontent. Under the leadership of the Philhellene aristocracy, the state had entered into entangling alliances throughout Greece and the East. These alliances were now compelling Rome to decide whether she would continue to endure daily insults as a “friend” or assume control. She chose the second alternative, though with many misgivings. The Senate dreaded the military power that empire necessarily required, while the democratic leaders feared the power and prestige that provincial administration would give the Senate. In short, questions of foreign policy [OCR unclear:...c simplgsf rffftrra rr%\\(\ nitf N* Ht«/Tj*«j^i >.]. The irritating questions of government threatened to divide Rome into hostile factions.

By this time, too, the very stock of Rome had begun to change—not through immigration, but through the addition of emancipated slaves and war captives. Aemilianus doubtless exaggerated when he claimed that he had led to Rome in chains the hordes that now [OCR unclear: 1 the revolutionary bills of Gracchus]. But the remark would have seemed pointless if it had not contained much truth. The fact that reform through orderly compromise now gave way to revolution through bloodshed was largely due to the displacement of genuine Italic peoples by men of Oriental, Punic, and Iberian stock.

Finally, the evil consequences of the excessively generous leasing system now began to hang over the whole country. Leaseholders had soon gained possession of all vacant land, thereby preventing new distributions to a growing generation. More than that, they had an advantage over settlers who tried to work their plots by precarious, hand-to-mouth methods, and they even encroached upon and took possession of many such holdings. During the sixty years before the Gracchan reforms—a period in which war casualties counted for little—the citizen population of Rome did not increase at all. Apparently the peasantry lost courage and withdrew either to the provinces or into the uncounted riffraff of the cities.

It was a young aristocrat, Tiberius Gracchus,* the friend and associate of a group of moderates who read Stoic philosophy in their leisure hours, who had the courage and faith to attempt agrarian reforms that seemed to promise social and political improvement. While traveling through Etruria, he had observed that the plantation system depended upon slavery, which he, with clearer vision than his contemporaries, regarded as an evil in itself. In speeches of which fragments have survived, he argued that such a system could not provide the strong body of yeomen needed by the army of a growing state. He went further and appealed to humanitarian motives as well. Adopting a social theory then gaining support among Greek publicists, he assumed that, in return for loyal service, the state owed its citizens a parcel of land on which they could earn a livelihood. His proposal was to reclaim public lands held in violation of the quantitative restrictions of the old Licinian law and distribute them in small lots to Roman citizens as inalienable leaseholds at low rents.

* The principal accounts are found in Appian, B.C. I, 1–26, and Plutarch’s Lives of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus. Greenidge and Clay, Sources for Roman History, provide a convenient collection of most of the other ancient references. The introductory chapters in Greenidge, A History of Rome, give an admirable review of social and economic conditions. His chapters on the Gracchi, together with those in Heitland, The Roman Republic, II, provide the best surveys of the Gracchan reforms. For discussion of the sources, see Fowler in Eng. Hist. Rev., 1905; E. Meyer, Kleine Schriften, p. 383; and Cardinali, Studi Graccani, 1912. The fragments of the Gracchan speeches are collected in Meyer, Orat. Rom. Frag.

The senators discussed the bill and rejected it. They argued that it was unjust to reassert a claim to lands that the state had overlooked for generations, that had in fact been improved at considerable expense by their holders, and that had, to some extent, even passed by inheritance or purchase to “widows and orphans,” who somehow seem even then to have accumulated dubious titles. They also reminded the Italian peoples who had been admitted to such lands that, if the Gracchan measures were adopted, they would probably lose everything they possessed to Roman citizens.

Blocked by the Senate, Tiberius revived the long-dormant provision of the constitution of 287 that permitted legislative proposals to be submitted by referendum* to the plebeian assembly. When he called for a vote, however, another tribune, Octavius, exercised his legal right to interpose a veto. Refusing to be blocked, Tiberius then proposed a measure legalizing the “recall” of tribunes who acted contrary to the wishes of their constituents. The measure passed amid cries and accusations of rebellion. Because it was forced through without adequate constitutional justification, the act came close to rebellion, and others later revived the precedent. Yet Tiberius’ instinct was correct. The tribune had not originally been intended as a magistrate of the state, but rather as the advocate and patron of a class or of individuals and, as such, as a servant of the needs of his constituency. Furthermore, the enlargement of the board of tribunes to the unwieldy number of ten had not been intended to create divisions within the board, but only to extend its capacity for action over a large area. Once tribunes began selling their services to checkmate one another, the board’s original purpose was defeated. Its efficiency could be restored only by reducing its membership, virtually or actually, to one; the introduction of the “recall,” at least, would accomplish that. In any case, the constitution of 287 had empowered the assembly to make whatever legislative experiment it desired, although it was duty-bound to employ less abbreviated methods than those Tiberius used on this occasion.

* F. F. Abbott, “The Referendum and Recall among the Ancient Romans,” Sewanee Review, 1915. The theory of recall was again successfully applied in Cicero’s day: Asconius, In Cornelianam, ed. Kiess., p. 64.

Thus, by overhauling the machinery of popular sovereignty, Tiberius passed his drastic agrarian law. He had a judicial commission elected and given authority to examine and adjudicate titles and to distribute the lots. The Senate continued trying to obstruct the law’s execution and, after Tiberius’ death, succeeded in nullifying the commission’s powers. Nevertheless, some of the boundary stones erected by the commission still exist. If Mommsen’s contention is correct—that an increase of 73,000* names on Rome’s census list for 125 B.C. indicates an increase of approximately that many landholders—the committee must have worked with great success. Fate has generously preserved a milestone* erected by the consul Popilius, Tiberius’ chief opponent, on which he had inscribed this surprising record: “I first compelled the grazers to give back the public land to tillers.” One is almost tempted to guess that some sarcastic workman inserted the line for amusement. But perhaps Popilius was, after all, a shrewd politician who knew when to steer with the wind.

* See Mommsen, Rom. Hist. III, 75. Beloch, Die Bevölkerung, p. 308, questions this interpretation. The riddle cannot be solved so long as we do not know the precise scope of the census list. Against Mommsen’s view, it has been objected that the land lots were leased rather than given outright, and that possession of them therefore did not confer citizenship of full rank. This objection, however, is hardly valid. Gracchus was primarily interested in enlarging a sound body of full citizens capable of military service, and he may well have inserted a clause in his law granting full citizenship to his colonists.

* A milestone in Lucania, on the new military road leading from Capua to Sicily. The sentence reads: “Eidemque primus feci ut de agro poplico aratoribus cederent paastores.” C.I.L. I, 551.

Tiberius’ attempt to secure reelection resulted in a riot in which he was killed, and his work soon came to a standstill. His brother Gaius, however, attained the same office in 124 and continued the work with a greatly expanded program. Gaius Gracchus remains an enigma to us, because the documents on which our later sources rest were all written in the bitterest partisan spirit, whether for or against the tribune. From the fragments of his speeches* quoted verbatim—although often excerpted with hostile intent—it is clear that he sometimes acted in the spirit of a party leader who, when necessary, could propose measures of general value in order to gain adherents and strengthen his bloc. His own words seem to demonstrate that he even struck at his opponents in a purely vindictive manner. These facts, however, must not weigh heavily in judging his principal program or interpreting doubtful points. In pagan Rome, which was not yet very far removed from the age of the vendetta, vindictiveness under the sting of a brother’s murder was accepted as reasonable and considered entirely compatible with lofty ideals. The only question that concerns us at present is whether the pursuit of vengeance blurred his vision or misdirected the final blow when the great work of reform demanded completion. It must be admitted that no legislative act of his that actually passed was not fully justified from the standpoint of his program.

* Meyer, Orat. Rom. Frag., pp. 224 ff.

As for the intrusion of party politics, we can seldom determine which measures were merely means to an end and were intended to be annulled or neutralized after the goal had been reached. The monthly distribution of grain to the poor at half price was cited by his opponents as a case of bribery. This may be correct. But it is also possible that Gaius instituted the measure as temporary relief [OCR unclear: yser^TonVmif^ ^^ --tttTiT&ctlfc “ToiSfief tlTf poor in t! rybjjr^ further _ ^lOf^I^v veoiBrp] for work in the numerous enterprises in which he employed urban laborers. It is not unlikely, however, that this was an open experiment in state socialism, perhaps suggested by his Stoic mentor.* We know that the theory that the state owed its poor a livelihood had become current in the East during the dreary days of the third century, when Greece was slowly dwindling into futility. If Gracchus was touched by such humanitarian ideas, [OCR unclear: th^ full of wheat from Sicily, which belonged to the Pwy^*]. They had only to vote [OCR unclear: a rtktnTnffSnBTmSSeRSlof] their own property. Why should [OCR unclear: d hui|g|2jAflL&^] when the decision to open [OCR unclear: the lay in tficy] own hands?

* Köhler, Sitz. Akad. Berlin, 1898, p. 841; Wilamowitz, ibid., 1904, p. 917; Rostowzew, article Frumentum in Pauly-Wissowa, VII, 139. The Stoic philosopher Blossius, teacher and companion of the Gracchi, seems to have played the same role of social reformer in connection with his pupils that Sphaerus had played a century earlier, when he encouraged Cleomenes to divide all property in Sparta. The Gracchi might also have learned of such movements in Greece through their personal conversations with Polybius, who was deeply interested in the career of the strange Spartan king. Cicero, De Off. II, 80, implies that the Gracchi followed the example of the Spartan kings: “ex eo tempore tantae discordiae secutae sunt.”

The experiment certainly produced disastrous results. It neutralized the success of the Gracchan colonial schemes and—because no one later dared oppose the charity—led to the continued pauperization of the Roman populace. But the first experimenters in social legislation readily fall into error, and recent experience has shown that states facing the demands of strenuous military duties take shortcuts to secure a contented and well-fed population, regardless of the future effects on general morale.

Two other measures are usually attributed to partisan motives: the transfer of jury service from the senators to wealthy men, the equites, and the replacement of native tax collectors in the province of Asia by Roman publicans who collected the dues under contract. A fragment of a speech by Gracchus clearly proves that, in the former case, the author fully understood that the measure would create a division between the nobility and the knights—as, of course, it did. The significant political consequence of the law emphasized by Diodorus* and other critics of Gracchus—namely, its effect in placing provincial governors at the mercy of the publicans—could hardly have been contemplated or even foreseen when the measure was passed. That remote result became possible only through the slowly accumulated effects of the contract law. Gaius clearly intended to curtail senatorial power. But if we remember his distinctive faith in businesspeople and business methods, we can readily believe that he wished above all to elevate that class [OCR unclear: by means of some corresponding consideration], secure its goodwill, and use its experience in public [OCR unclear:...]. Although the later record of this class as jurymen probably fell short of his expectations, there is no evidence that it performed these services with less honesty or efficiency than the senators had shown.

* Cicero, De Leg. III, 9; Diodorus, XXXVII, 9.

* Diodorus, XXXV, 25.

The collection of the Asiatic tithes by contract—although, like all work performed through political contracts, it [OCR unclear:... corruption]—produced a larger and more [OCR unclear:... revenue] than collection [OCR unclear:... local authorities... distant... bureau...]. In a state such as the empire [OCR unclear: t...], [OCR unclear:... tire of alluding to the harmful influence of the contract system], which is still used so widely in modern democracies, and they stand quite aghast before the fact that the largest democracy still proceeds without so much as a budget. To Gaius Gracchus, the introduction of the contract system was, of course, a step toward efficiency. He found that the tribute imposed on Asia a few years earlier was dwindling, partly because some districts were incapable of financial administration and partly because even the most capable districts would evade the burden under any available pretext. If he knew—as any experienced Roman must have known from complaints against the publicans operating in Italy—that the companies would sometimes yield to the temptation to commit fraud and extort money, he nevertheless had reason to trust either the supervision of the provincial [OCR unclear:...] or the vigilance of a Roman tribune to bring the guilty to punishment. At any rate, both measures reveal in Gracchus a faith in and deep interest in the possessors of wealth, a trait of which we have found some trace in Appius Claudius and Flaminius, but hardly anywhere else.

It was apparently the same sympathy with the commercial classes that led Gaius to conceive a new type of colony: nothing less than seaport colonies, established not merely to protect landing places from incursions, but to encourage Mediterranean commerce. When the great port of Carthage was destroyed in 146, the Senate had been so negligent of commercial interests that it left the new province of Africa dependent for ingress and egress upon non-Roman ports such as Utica. Gracchus now proposed to remedy this deficiency by planting a citizen colony at Carthage.* Tarentum, too, partly ruined by the Punic War, was to receive a colony of selected citizens who might restore the port to its former splendor. The need there was great, because a large part of the recently allotted land lay in southern Italy. A third colony of selected citizens was sent to Scylacium, opposite Vibo, perhaps in response to the advice of merchants who preferred a portage there to risking the difficult voyage around and through the Straits of Messana. It should be remembered that Rome still found it practical to obtain much of its merchandise by land transport all the way from Puteoli. In all these measures, the tribune may have had the advice of the best business intelligence, since his vast enterprises constantly brought him into contact with men engaged in large affairs.

* Plutarch, C. Gracch. 6, 8, 10; Appian, B.C. I, 23; Livy, Epit. 60; Velleius, II, 7. See Hardy, Six Roman Laws, p. 73. Gracchus’ policy in founding these colonies is well discussed in Abbott, “The Colonizing Policy of the Romans,” Class. Phil., 1915, p. 368.

The proposal that brought the young enthusiast to defeat—a proposal offering the voter simple justice without any material benefit—was a bill granting citizenship to everyone who possessed Latin rights and Latinitas to all other Italians. His enemies saw in this merely a scheme to create a new electorate bound to him alone, although it is difficult to understand why he would have jeopardized his existing support to gain a new constituency if power had been his object. His purpose in this measure was partly to place the Italians in a fair position regarding [OCR unclear: inn retcrencewiBc^ ^inn fif ^^”^ “”‘’*’ ^^irftt ylir* •^^^^^ ^”^^ ^*»^ rtlMM jtf] irresponsible Roman officials. Moreover, his outspoken interest in [OCR unclear:...] from whom to draw soldiers for the army, and his dislike of the [OCR unclear:...] Roman class that threatened to dominate the city, support the belief that he also saw great advantages for Rome in this measure. The bill, however, only awakened hopes among the Italians, and its defeat hastened the Social War.

The Gracchan reforms did not save Rome from the deserved [OCR unclear:... of her nup|^^]. The defeated measures remained obstructed, while those that passed were either modified by the Senate or administered with so little of their author’s spirit that their benefits were largely neutralized and their evils exaggerated. The actual results contradicted every hope and intention. The agrarian laws doubtless improved central Italy and temporarily relieved Rome; but because they remained incomplete, they sowed the seeds of the Social War. Meanwhile, the continuation of the grain distributions soon reduced the city to a worse condition than before.

The equites were recognized in affairs of state, and this recognition should have broadened the economic outlook of Roman statesmanship. Unfortunately, when they were met and obstructed at every turn by the jealousy of the old aristocracy, they degenerated into a selfish faction, content to become parasites of the financial bureau and to grow rich on whatever capitalistic investments the new contract system placed in their way. The reintroduction of the principle of popular sovereignty was defensible only if the electorate could have been reformed as the Gracchi intended. Without that reform, the Roman populace was becoming incapable of governing itself, much less of governing the world. Once the populace had recovered the machinery that made it all-powerful, the resulting breach in the constitution could not easily be healed. The rehabilitation of the plebeian assembly therefore led directly to the civil wars and the Caesarian autocracy.

The results of these struggles that are of immediate interest to economists are the elevation of the capitalist and mercantile class to a position of power within the state and its financial enterprises; the closing of Italian lands to colonization, which directed capital into other channels; and the acceptance of a policy of state charity for Rome’s poor, which permanently discouraged industry in the city.