Such was the man who now came back to Rome to demand from the aristocracy a reckoning for which he had been yearning with undying passion for nearly ten years. An exaggerated contrast between him and Tiberius at the expense of the latter has been previously condemned. The man who originates is always so far greater than the man who imitates, and Caius only followed where his brother led. He was not greater than but only like his brother in his bravery, in his culture, in the faculty of inspiring in his friends strong enthusiasm and devotion, in his unswerving pursuit of a definite object, and, as his sending the son of Fulvius Flaccus to the Senate just before his death proves in the teeth of all assertions to the contrary, in his willingness to use his personal influence in order to avoid civil bloodshed. [Sidenote: Caius compared with Tiberius.] The very dream which Caius told to the people shows that his brother's spell was still on him, and his telling it, together with his impetuous oratory and his avowed fatalism, militates against the theory that Tiberius was swayed by impulse and sentiment, and he by calculation and reason. But no doubt he profited by experience of the past. He had learned how to bide his time, and to think generosity wasted on the murderous crew whom he had sworn to punish. Pure in life, perfectly prepared for a death to which he considered himself foredoomed, glowing with one fervent passion, he took up his brother's cause with a double portion of his brother's spirit, because he had thought more before action, because he had greater natural eloquence, and because being forewarned he was forearmed.

In spite of the labours of recent historians, the legislation of Caius Gracchus is still hard to understand. Where the original authorities contradict each other, as they often do, probable conjecture is the most which can be attained, and no attempt will be made here to specify what were the measures of the first tribunate of Caius and what of the second. [Sidenote: The general purpose of the legislation of Caius.] The general scope and tendency of his legislation is clear enough. It was to overthrow the senatorial government, and in the new government to give the chief share of the executive power to the mercantile class, and the chief share of the legislative power to the country class. These were his immediate aims. Probably he meant to keep all the strings he thus set in motion in his own hands, so as to be practically monarch of Rome. But whether he definitely conceived the idea of monarchy, and, looking beyond his own requirements, pictured to himself a successor at some future time inheriting the authority which he had established, no one can say. In such vast schemes there must have been much that was merely tentative. But had he lived and retained his influence we may be sure that the Empire would have been established a century earlier than it was.

[Sidenote: Date of the tribunate of Caius, December 10, B.C. 124.] Rome was thronged to overflowing by the country class, and the nobles strained every nerve in opposition when Caius was elected tribune. He was only fourth on the list out of ten, and entered on his office on December 10, B.C. 124. With a fixed presentiment of his own fate, he felt that, even if he wished to remain passive, the people would not permit him to be so. He might, he said, have pleaded that he and his young child were the last representatives of a noble line—of P. Africanus and Tiberius Gracchus—and that he had lost a brother in the people's cause; but the people would not have listened to the plea. It has been said that his mother dissuaded him from his intentions. But the fragments on which the statement is based are as likely as not spurious; and Cornelia's fortitude after she had lost both her sons would hardly have been shown by one capable of subordinating public to private interests.

[Sidenote: Story of his mother's sentiments.] It is far more likely that when in his stirring speeches he spoke of his home as no place for him to visit, while his mother was weeping and in despair, he was influenced by her adjurations to avenge his brother, and not by any craven warnings against sharing his fate. However this may have been, no timid influences could be traced in the fiery passion of his first speeches. [Sidenote: Story of the means by which he modulated his voice when speaking.] He was, in fact, so carried away by his feelings that he had to resort to a curious device in order to keep his voice under control. A man with a musical instrument used, it is said, to stand near him, and warn him by a note at times if he was pitching his voice too high or too low. It was now that he told his stories of the flogging of the magistrate of Teanum and the murder of the Venusian herdsman, and we can imagine how they would incense his hearers against the nobles. Against one of them, Octavius, he specially directed a law, making it illegal for any magistrate previously deposed by the people to be elected to office; but this, at Cornelia's suggestion it is said, he withdrew. Another law also had special reference to the fate of Tiberius. It made illegal the trial of any citizen for an offence which involved the loss of his civic rights without the consent of the people. [Sidenote: Caius procures the banishment of Popillius Laenas.] This law, if in force, would have prevented the ferocity with which Popillius Laenas hunted down the partisans of Tiberius; and Caius followed it up according to the oration De Domo, by procuring against Popillius a sentence of outlawry. One of the fragments from his speeches was probably spoken at this time. In it he told the people that they now had the chance they had so long and so passionately desired; and that, if they did not avail themselves of it, they would lay themselves open to the charge of caprice or of ungoverned temper. Popillius anticipated the sentence by voluntary retirement from Rome.

[Sidenote: His Lex Frumentaria.] Having satisfied his conscience by the performance of what no doubt seemed to him sacred duties, Caius at once set to work to build up his new constitution. It is commonly represented that in order to gain over the people to his side he cynically bribed them by his Lex Frumentaria. Now if this were true, and Caius were as clear-sighted as the same writers who insist on the badness of the law describe him to have been, it is hard to see how they can in the same breath eulogise his goodness and nobleness. To gain his ends he would have been using vile means, and would have been a vile man. [Sidenote: The common criticism on it unjust.] Looking, however, more closely into the law, we are led to doubt whether it was bad, or, at all events, even granting that eventually it led to evil, whether it would have appeared likely to do so to Caius. The public land, it must be remembered, was liable to an impost called vectigal. This vectigal went into the Aerarium, which the nobles had at their disposal. Now the law of Caius appears to have fixed a nominal price for corn to all Roman citizens, and if the market price was above this price the difference would have to be made good from the Aerarium. We at once see the object of Caius, and how the justice of it might have blinded him to the demoralising effects of his measure. 'The public land,' he said in effect, 'belongs to all Romans and so does the vectigal. If you take that to which you have no right, you shall give it back again in cheap corn.' In short, it was a clever device for partially neutralising the long misappropriation of the State's property by the nobles, and for giving to the people what belonged to the people—to each man, as it were, so many ears of corn from whatever fraction would be his own share of the land. [Sidenote: Contrast between the just proposal of Caius and the demagogy of Drusus.] When Drusus was afterwards set up to outbid Caius, he proposed that the vectigal should be remitted, and that the land that had been assigned might be sold by the occupier. How this would catch the farmer's fancy is as obvious as is its odious dishonesty. It was dishonest to the State because it was only fair that each occupier should contribute to its funds, and because it did away with the hope of filling Italy with free husbandmen. It was dishonest to the occupier himself, because it put in his way the worst temptation to unthriftiness. When Caius renewed his brother's laws he purposely charged the land distributed to the poor with a yearly vectigal. How different was this from the mere demagogic trick of Drusus! It appears, then, that the Lex Frumentaria of Caius is not the indefensible measure which modern writers, filled with modern notions, have called it. It has, moreover, been well said that it was a kind of poor-law; and, even if bad in itself, may have been the least bad remedy for the pauperism which not Caius, but senatorial misgovernment had brought about. No doubt it conferred popularity on Caius, and no doubt his popularity was acceptable to him; but there is no ground for believing that his noble nature deliberately stooped to demoralise the mob for selfish motives.

[Sidenote: His Lex Judiciaria.] One great party, however, he had thus won over to his side. The Lex Judiciaria gained over the equites also. It has been before explained that the equites at this time were non-senatorial rich men. Senators were forbidden by law to mix in commerce, though no doubt they evaded the law. Between the senatorial and moneyed class there was a natural ill-will, which Caius proceeded to use and increase. His exact procedure we do not know for certain. According to some authorities he made the judices eligible from the equites only, instead of from the Senate. In the epitome of Livy it is stated that 600 of the equites were to be added to the number of the senators, so that the equites should have twice as much power as the Senate itself. This at first sight seems nonsense. But Caius may have proposed that for judicial purposes 600 equites should form, as it were, a second chamber, which, being twice as numerous, would permit two judices for every senatorial judex. In form he may have devised that 'counter-senate,' which, as it has been shown, he in fact created. [Sidenote: The effects of it. The Senate abased, the equites exalted.] But whether Caius provided that all the judices or only two-thirds of them should be chosen from the equites, and in whatever way he did so, he did succeed in exalting the moneyed class and abasing the Senate. In civil processes, and in the permanent and temporary commissions for the administration of justice, the equites were henceforth supreme. Even the senators themselves depended on their verdict for acquittal or condemnation, and the chief power in the State had changed hands. Of course the change would not be felt at once to the full; but this was the most trenchant stroke which Gracchus aimed at the Senate's power. Here, again, it is customary to write of his actions as if they were governed solely by feeling, quite apart from all considerations of right and wrong. But Cicero declares that for nearly fifty years, while the equites discharged this office, there was not even the slightest suspicion of a single eques being bribed in his capacity as judex; and after every allowance has been made for Ciceronian exaggeration, the statement may at least warrant us in believing that Gracchus had some reason for hoping that his change would be a change for the better, even if, as Appian declares, it turned out in the end just the opposite. Indeed, it is beyond question that, as the provinces were governed by the senatorial class, judices who had to decide cases like those of Cotta would be more fairly chosen from the equites than from the class to which Cotta belonged.

[Sidenote: The taxation of Asia.] We know little of the arrangements for the taxation of Asia made by Gracchus. He provided that the taxes should be let by auction at Rome, which would undoubtedly be a boon to the Roman capitalists and a check to provincial competition. He is said also to have substituted the whole system of direct and indirect taxes for the previously existing system of fixed payments by the various states. There was a certain narrowness about the conceptions of both the Gracchi with regard to the transmarine world, which was common to all Romans; to which, for instance, Tiberius gave expression when he spoke of the conquest of the whole world as a thing which his audience had a right to expect; and this sentiment may have in this instance influenced Caius to use harshness. [Sidenote: The common criticism on the measure of Caius unjust.] But even here to condemn without more knowledge of his measures would be unjust. Fixed payments it must be remembered were not always preferable to tithes of the produce. In a sterile year the payers of vectigalia would be best off. Again, if a rich province like Asia did not pay tribute in proportion to other provinces, a re-adjustment of its taxes would not seem to the Romans unfair; and perhaps auction at Rome would after all be less mischievous than a hole-and-corner arrangement in the provinces. If the sheep were to be fleeced, they would not be shorn closest in the capital. [Sidenote: Measure for the relief of publicani.] To another of his provisions at all events no one could object—the one which gave relief to such publicani as had suffered loss in collecting the revenue.

[Sidenote: Alleged privileges conferred on the equites.] Gracchus had thus raised the equites above the Senate at Rome in the courts of justice, and opened a golden harvest to them in the provinces. It is conjectured that he also gave them the distinction of a golden finger-ring and reserved seats at the public spectacles. Two classes were thus gratified, the city poor and the city rich. [Sidenote: Caius attempts to conciliate the farmer class and the Italians.] But Gracchus had to deal also with those of the country class in whose favour his brother's agrarian law had been passed, and with those who had resented the law. To provide for the former he renewed the operation of his brother's law, which had been suspended by Scipio's intervention, and probably took away its administrations from the consuls and restored it to triumvirs; and as that might be insufficient, he began the establishment of many colonies in various parts of the peninsula; and even beyond it at Carthage, to which he invited colonists from all parts of Italy. To compensate and benefit the latter he proposed to give them the franchise, so as to secure them from such outrages as that of Teanum. For though such of them as belonged to Roman colonies or municipia possessed the franchise already, the mass of the Latins and Italians did not possess it. There are different accounts of this measure; but Appian says that he wished to give the Latini the Jus Suffragii and Jus Honorum, and to the rest of the Italians the Jus Suffragii only. But here he reckoned without his host. [Sidenote: Feeling at Rome.] The boons of colonies and cheap bread, and the prospect of a slice out of the public land occupied by Italians, were all not strong enough to overcome the deep, ingrained prejudice against extending the franchise. Rich and poor Romans met here on the common ground of narrow pride, and the offence caused by this wise project probably paved the way for the tribune's fall.

In speaking of the motives which induced Tiberius to seek the tribunate a second time (p. 33) it has been said that he was not influenced by personal considerations, but wanted time to carry out his measures. This view is confirmed by what Appian says about Caius, namely, that he was elected a second time; for already a law had been enacted to this effect, that if a tribune could not find time for executing in his tribunate what he had promised, the people might give the office to him again in preference to anyone else. This has been pronounced to be a blunder on Appian's part, but without adequate reason. It was in fact the natural and inevitable law which Caius would insist on first, and he would plead for it precisely on the grounds which Appian states. It is also clear that such a law once passed made virtual monarchy at Rome possible. [Sidenote: Other measures of Caius.] In fact the other measures of Caius were both worthy of a great and wise monarch, and might with good reason be thought to be designed to lead to monarchy. [Sidenote: Roads. Granaries. Soldiers' uniform. Age for service.] He constructed magnificent roads—along which, it would be whispered, his voters might come more easily to Rome. He built public granaries. He gave the soldiers clothing at the cost of the State. He made seventeen the minimum age for service in the army. He himself superintended the plantation of his own colonies. Everywhere he made his finger felt; but whether this was of set purpose or only from his constitutional energy it is hard to decide. His chief object, however, was to overthrow the Senate; and we have not yet exhausted the list of his assaults upon it. [Sidenote: Change in nomination to provinces.] Hitherto it had been the custom for the Senate to name the consular provinces for the next year after the election of the consuls, which meant that if a favourite was consul a rich province was given to him, and if not, a poor one. Caius enacted that the consular provinces should be named before the election of the consuls. By way, perhaps, of softening this restriction he took away from the tribunes their veto on the naming of the consular provinces. [Sidenote: Alleged change in the order of voting.] He is further supposed, though on slender evidence, to have changed the order of voting in the Comitia Centuriata. Formerly the first class voted first. Now the order of voting first was to be settled by lot, and so the influence of the rich would be diminished.

[Sidenote: General criticism of his schemes.] Such, in outline, was the grand scheme of Caius Gracchus. If he was less single-minded in his aims than his brother, he could hardly help being so; and, having to reconcile so many conflicting interests, he may have swerved from what would have been his own ideal. But that his main purpose was to break down a rotten system, and establish a sound one on its ruins, and that no petty motive of expediency guided him, but only the one principle, 'salus populi suprema lex,' is incontrovertible. When we think of him so eloquent, resolute, and energetic, conceiving such great projects and executing them in person, making the regeneration of his country his lodestar in spite of his ever-present belief that he would, in the end, fall by the same fate as his brother, we think of him as one of the noblest figures in history—a purer and less selfish Julius Caesar.

[Sidenote: Machinations of the nobles.] As the petty acts of the nobles had brought out into relief the large policy of Tiberius, so it was now. They resorted to even lower tricks than accusations of tyranny, and found in the fatuity or dishonesty of Drusus a tool even more effective than Nasica's brutality. The plantation of a colony at Carthage was looked at askance by many Romans. It was the first colony planted out of Italy, and the superstitious were filled with forebodings which the Senate eagerly exaggerated. Such colonies had repeatedly out-grown and overtopped the parent state. The ground had been solemnly cursed, and the restoration of the town forbidden. When the first standard was set up by the colonists a blast of wind, it is said, blew it down, and scattered the flesh of the victims; and wolves had torn up the stakes that marked out the site. Such malicious stories met with readier credence, because, if it is true that Caius had called for colonists from all Italy, and Junonia was to be a Roman colony, he was evading the decree of the people against extending the franchise; and he was thus admitting to it, by a side-wind, those to whom it had just in the harshest manner been refused. For, when the vote had been taken, every man not having a vote had been expelled from the city, and forbidden to come within five miles of it till the voting was over. Caius had come to live in the Forum instead of on the Palatine when he returned to Rome, among his friends as he thought; and still even in little matters he stood forward as the champion of the poor against the rich. There was going to be a show of gladiators in the Forum, and the magistrates had enclosed the arena with benches, which they meant to hire out. Caius asked them to remove the benches, and, on their refusal, went the night before the show and took them all away. Anyone who has witnessed modern athletic sports, and observed how a crowd will hem in the competitors so that only a few spectators can see, although an equally good view can be obtained by a great number if the ring is enlarged, will perceive Caius's object, and be slow to admit that he spoiled the show. But though such acts pleased the people, all of them had not forgiven him the proposition about the franchise; and his popularity was on the wane. [Sidenote: Drusus outbids Caius.] The Senate had suborned one of his colleagues, M. Livius Drusus, to outbid him. Either Drusus thought he was guiding the Senate into a larger policy when he was himself merely the Senate's puppet, and this his son's career makes probable, or he was cynically dishonest and unscrupulous.

Caius had meditated, it may be, many colonies, but, according to Plutarch, had at this time only actually settled two. Drusus proposed to plant twelve, each of 3,000 citizens. Caius had superintended the settlement himself, and employed his friends. With virtuous self-denial Drusus washed his hands of all such patronage. Caius had imposed a yearly tax on those to whom he gave land; Drusus proposed to remit it. Caius had wished to give the Latins the franchise; Drusus replied by a comparatively ridiculous favour, which, however, might appeal more directly to the lower class of Latins. No Latin, he said, should be liable to be flogged even when serving in the army. Drusus could afford to be liberal. His colonies were sham colonies. His remission of the vectigal was a thin-coated poison. His promise to the Latins was at best a cheap one, and was not carried out. But none the less his treachery or imbecility served its purpose, and the greedier and baser of the partisans of Gracchus began to look coldly on their leader. [Sidenote: Caius rejected for the tribunate.] It is stated, indeed, that on his standing for the tribunate a third time he was rejected by fraud, his colleagues having made a false return of the names of the candidates. In any case he was not elected, and one of the consuls for the year 121 was L. Opimius, his mortal foe.

The end was drawing near. Sadly Caius must have recognised that his presentiments would soon be fulfilled, and that he must share his brother's fate. [Sidenote: Preparations for civil strife.] His foes proposed to repeal the law for the settlement of Junonia, and, according to Plutarch, others of his laws also. Warned by the past, his friends armed. Men came disguised as reapers to defend him. It is likely enough that they were really reapers, who would remember why Tiberius lost his life, and that their support would have saved him. Fulvius was addressing the people about the law when Caius, attended by some of his partisans, came to the Capitol. He did not join the meeting, but began walking up and down under a colonnade to wait its issue. Here a man named Antyllus, who was sacrificing, probably in behalf of Opimius the consul, either insulted the Gracchans and was stabbed by them, or caught hold of Caius's hand, or by some other familiarity or importunity provoked some hasty word or gesture from him, upon which he was stabbed by a servant. As soon as the deed was done the people ran away, and Caius hastened to the assembly to explain the affair. But it began to rain heavily; and for this, and because of the murder, the assembly was adjourned. Caius and Fulvius went home; but that night the people thronged the Forum, expecting that some violence would be done at daybreak. Opimius was not slow to seize the opportunity. He convoked the Senate, and occupied the temple of Castor and Pollux with armed men. The body of Antyllus was placed on a bier, and with loud lamentations borne along the Forum; and as it passed by the senators came out and hypocritically expressed their anger at the deed. Then, going indoors, they authorised the consul, by the usual formula, to resort to arms. He summoned the senators and equites to arm, and each eques was to bring two armed slaves. The equites owed much to Gracchus, but they basely deserted him now. Fulvius, on his side, armed and prepared for a struggle. All the night the friends of Caius guarded his door, watching and sleeping by turns. [Sidenote: Fighting in Rome.] The house of Fulvius was also surrounded by men, who drank and bragged of what they would do on the morrow, and Fulvius is said to have set them the example. At daybreak he and his men, to whom he distributed the arms which he had when consul taken from the Gauls, rushed shouting up to the Aventine and seized it. Caius said good-bye to his wife and little child, and followed, in his toga, and unarmed. He knew he was going to his death, but

For his country felt alone, And prized her blood beyond his own.

One effort he made to avert the struggle. He induced Fulvius to send his young son to the Senate to ask for terms. The messenger returned with the Senate's reply that they must lay down their arms, and the two leaders must come and answer for their acts. Caius was ready to go. But Fulvius was too deeply committed, and sent his son back again, upon which Opimius seized him, and at once marched to the Aventine. There was a fight, in which Fulvius was beaten, and with another son fled and hid himself in a bath or workshop. His pursuers threatened to burn all that quarter if he was not given up; so the man who had admitted him told another man to betray him, and father and son were slain.

[Sidenote: Murder of Caius.] Meanwhile Caius, who had neither armed nor fought, was about to kill himself in the temple of Diana, when his two friends implored him to try and save himself for happier times. Then it is said he invoked a curse on the people for their ingratitude, and fled across the Tiber. He was nearly overtaken; but his two staunch friends, Pomponius and Laetorius, gave their lives for their leader—Pomponius at the Porta Trigemina below the Aventine, Laetorius in guarding the bridge which was the scene of the feat of Horatius Cocles. As Caius passed people cheered him on, as if it was a race in the games. He called for help, but no one helped him—for a horse, but there was none at hand. One slave still kept up with him, named Philocrates or Euporus. Hard pressed by their pursuers the two entered the grove of Furina, and there the slave first slew Caius and then himself. A wretch named Septimuleius cut off the head of Gracchus; for a proclamation had been made that whosoever brought the heads of the two leaders should receive their weight in gold. Septimuleius, it is said, took out the brains and filled the cavity with lead; but if he cheated Opimius, Opimius in his turn cheated those who brought the head of Fulvius, for as they were of the lower class he would pay them nothing. The story may be false; but Opimius was subsequently convicted of selling his country's interests to Jugurtha for money, so that with equal likelihood it may be true. In the fight and afterwards he put to death 3,000 men, many of whom were innocent, but whom he would not allow to speak in their defence. The houses of Caius and Fulvius were sacked, and the property of the slain was confiscated. Then the city was purified, and the ferocious knave Opimius raised a temple to Concord, on which one night was found written 'The work of Discord makes the temple of Concord.' That year there was a famous vintage, and nearly two centuries afterwards there was some wine which had been made at the time that Caius Gracchus died. The wine, says the elder Pliny, tasted like and had the consistency of bitterish honey. But the memory of the great tribune has lasted longer than the wine, and will be honoured for ever by all those who revere patriotism and admire genius. He for whom at the last extremity friend and slave give their lives does not fall ingloriously. Even for a life so noble such deaths are a sufficient crown.

[Sidenote: The mother of the Gracchi.] The child of Caius did not long survive him. The son of Tiberius died while a boy. Only Cornelia, the worthy mother of the heroic brothers, remained. She could (according to the purport of Plutarch's pathetic narrative) speak of them without a sigh or tear; and those who concluded from this that her mind was clouded by age or misfortune, were too dull themselves to comprehend how a noble nature and noble training can support sorrow, for though fate may often frustrate virtue, yet 'to bear is to conquer our fate.'

[Sidenote: Position of the nobles after the murder. Lex Maria.] The nobles no doubt thought that, having got rid of Gracchus, they had renewed their own lease of power. But they had only placed themselves at the mercy of meaner men. The murderous scenes just related happened in 121 B.C., and in 119 we read of a Lex Maria, the first law, that is to say, promulgated by the destined scourge of the Roman aristocracy. Every Roman could vote, and voted by ballot, and was eligible to every office. The first law of Marius was to protect voters from the solicitations of candidates for office. It is significant that the nobles opposed it, though in the end it was carried. Stealthy intrigue was now their safest weapon, but their power was tottering to its fall. Too jealous of each other to submit to the supremacy of one, it only remained for them to be overthrown by some leader of the popular party, and the Republic was no more. Yet, as if smitten by judicial blindness, they proceeded to hasten on their own ruin by reactionary provocations to their opponents. [Sidenote: Gracchan laws remain in force.] They dared not interfere with the corn law of Caius, for now that every man had a vote, which he could give by ballot, they were dependent on the suffrages of the mob. Neither dared they till seventeen years later make an attempt to interfere with the selection of the judices from the equestrian order, and even then the attempt failed. The scheme of taxation in the province of Asia was also left untouched. But what they dared to do they did. They prosecuted the adherents of Gracchus. They recalled Popillius from exile. When Opimius was arraigned for 'perduellio,' or misuse of his official power to compass the death of a citizen, they procured his acquittal. But when Carbo was accused of the same crime, they remembered that he had been a partisan of Tiberius, though since a renegade, and would not help him. So while Opimius got off, the champion of Opimius was driven to commit suicide—a fitting close to a contemptible career.

[Sidenote: Reactionary legislation.] But they soon assailed measures as well as men. The Lex Baebia appears to have secured those who had actually established themselves at Carthage in their allotments; but the Senate annulled the colonies which Caius had planned in Italy, and, with one exception, Neptunia, broke up those already settled. [Sidenote: The agrarian law annulled.] Then by three successive enactments it got rid of the agrarian law, and plunged Italy again into the decline from which by the help of that law she was emerging. 1. The occupiers were allowed again to sell their land. Tiberius had expressly forbidden this, and now the rich at once began to buy out the small owners, whom they often evicted by means more or less foul. 2. A tribune named Borius, or Thorius, prohibited any further distribution of land, thus knocking on the head the permanent commission. These two laws were tantamount to handing over to the rich in the city and the country the greater part of the public land, giving them a legal title to it instead of the possession on sufferance with which the Gracchi had interfered. The mouths of the farmers were stopped by the pernicious but tempting permission to sell their land. The people were cajoled by the vectigalia, which Drusus had abolished, being reimposed, and the proceeds divided among them. 3. Encouraged by the general acquiescence in these insidious aggressions they induced a tribune, whose name is conjectured to have been C. Baebius, to do away with the vectigalia altogether. [Sidenote: Lex Thoria.] The date of this law, usually called the Thorian law, was 111 B.C. The real Thorian law was probably carried in 118 B.C. Between these dates the rich would have been getting back the land from the poor occupiers, and so, when the Senate abolished the vectigalia, it was really pocketing them, and once for all and by a legal form turning the public into private land. This law, which is here called the Baebian law, Cicero ascribes to Spurius Thorius, who, he says, freed the land from the vectigal. But as Appian says that Spurius Borius imposed the vectigal, it is assumed that Cicero confused names, that the Spurius Borius of Appian was Spurius Thorius, and that the tribune whom Cicero calls Thorius was really quite another person. However that may be, the law would benefit the rich, because the rich would be owners of the land. Certain provisions of it were directly meant to prevent opposition in the country. For if many of the poor farmers would grumble at being ousted from their land, the land which had been specially assigned to Latin towns, and of which Tiberius Gracchus had threatened to dispossess them, was left in the same state as before his legislation; that is to say, the Senate did not give the occupiers an indefeasible title, but it did not meddle with them. Moreover, it amply indemnified the Socii and Latini who had surrendered land for the colonies of Caius, while some compensation was given to poor farmers by a clause, that in future a man might only graze ten large and fifty smaller beasts on the pastures of what still remained public land. By this law the jurisdiction over land which had been assigned by the triumvirs was given to the consuls, censors, and praetors, the jurisdiction over cases in which disputes with the publicani required settlement being granted to the consuls, praetors, and, as such cases would occur chiefly in the provinces which were mostly under propraetors, to propraetors also.

[Sidenote: Pernicious results of the reaction.] The results of this reactionary legislation are partly summed up by Appian, when he attributes to it a dearth of citizens, soldiers, and revenue. To our eyes its effects are clearer still. Slave labour and slave-discontent, 'latifundia,' decrease of population, depreciation of the land, received a fresh impetus, and the triumphant optimates pushed the State step by step further down the road to ruin. For the end for which they struggled was not the good of Italy, much less of the world, but the supremacy of Rome in Italy, and of themselves in Rome. Wealth and office were shared by an ever narrowing circle. Ten years after the passing of the Baebian law, it was said that among all the citizens there were only 2,000 wealthy families. And between the years 123 and 109 B.C. four sons and probably two nephews of Quintus Metellus gained the consulship, five of the six gained triumphs, and one was censor, while he himself had filled all the highest offices of the State. Thus, as Sallust says, the nobles passed on the chief dignities from hand to hand.

There must have been many of the Gracchan party, now left without a head, who burned for deliverance from such despicable masters. But they were for the time disorganized and cowed. [Sidenote: Caius Marius.] There was one man whom Scipio Aemilianus was said to have pointed out in the Numantine war as capable, if he himself died, of taking his place; and the rough soldier had already come forward as a politician, on the one hand checking the optimates by protecting the secrecy and efficiency of the ballot, and on the other defying the mob by opposing a distribution of corn; but for the present no one could tell how far he would or could go, and though he had already been made praetor, the Metelli could as yet afford to despise him. The death of Caius prolonged the Senate's misrule for twenty years. Twenty years of shame at home and abroad—the turpitude of the Jugurthine war—a second and more stubborn slave revolt in Sicily—the apparition of the Northern hordes inflicting disaster after disaster upon the Roman armies, which in 105 B.C. culminated in another and more appalling Cannae—these things had yet to come about before the cup of the Senate's infamy was full, and before those who had drawn the sword against the Gracchi perished by the sword of Marius, impotent, unpitied, and despised.

* * * * *



CHAPTER IV.

THE JUGURTHINE WAR.

[Sidenote: Attalus of Pergamus.] Attalus III., the last of that supple dynasty which had managed to thrive on the jealous and often treacherous patronage of Rome, left his dominions at his death to the Republic. He had begun his reign by massacring all his father's friends and their families, and ended it as an amateur gardener and dilettante modeller in wax; so perhaps the malice of insanity had something to do with the bequest, if indeed it was not a forgery. Aristonicus, a natural son of a previous king, Eumenes II., set it at naught and aspired to the throne.

[Sidenote: Aristonicus usurps the kingdom of Pergamus.] Attalus died in 133, the year of the tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus, when Scipio was besieging Numantia, and the first slave revolt was raging in Sicily. The Romans had their hands full, and Aristonicus might have so established himself as to give them trouble, had not some of the Asiatic cities headed by Ephesus, and aided by the kings of Cappadocia and Bithynia, opposed him. He seized Leucae (the modern Lefke) and was expelled by the Ephesians. But when the Senate found time to send commissioners, he was already in possession of Thyatira, Apollonia, Myndus, Colophon, and Samos. Blossius, the friend of Gracchus, had come to him, and the civil strife at Rome must have raised his hopes. [Sidenote: Conduct of Crassus, illustrating Roman rule in the province.] But in the year 131 P. Licinius Crassus Mucianus, the father-in-law of Caius Gracchus, was consul, and was sent to Asia. He was Pontifex Maximus, rich, high-born, eloquent, and of great legal knowledge; and from his intimacy with the Gracchi and Scipio he must have been an unusually favourable specimen of the aristocrat of the day. And this is what he did in Asia. He was going to besiege Leucae, and having seen two pieces of timber at Elaea, sent for the larger of them to make a battering ram. The builder, who was the chief magistrate of the town, sent him the smaller piece as being the most suitable, and Crassus had him stripped and scourged. Next year he was surprised by the enemy near Leucae. Apparently he could have got off if he had not been laden with his collections in Asia, to procure which he had intrigued to prevent his colleague Flaccus getting that province. Unable to escape, he provoked his captor to kill him by thrusting a stick into his eye. His death was a striking comment on the Senate's government. Cruelty and culture, personal bravery and. incompetence—such an alloy was now the best metal which its most respectable representatives could supply.

[Sidenote: End of Aristonicus and settlement of the kingdom.] Aristonicus was now the more formidable because he had roused the slaves, among whom the spirit of revolt, in sympathy with the rest of their kind throughout the Roman world, was then working. But in the year 130 M. Perperna surprised him, and carried him to Rome. Blossius committed suicide. The pretender was strangled in prison. Part of his territory was given to the kings who had helped the consul, one of whom was the father of the great Mithridates. Phrygia was the share assigned to him; but the Senate took it back from his successor, saying that the consul Aquillius had been bribed to give it. The consul may have been base or the Senate mean, or, what is more probable, the baseness of the one was used as a welcome plea by the other's meanness. The European part was added to the province of Macedonia. The Lycian confederacy received Telmissus. The rest was formed into a province, which was called Asia—the name being at once an incentive to and a nucleus for future annexation. Such a nucleus they already possessed in the province of Africa, and there also war was kindled by the ambition of a bastard.

[Sidenote: Jugurtha.] Jugurtha was the illegitimate son of Mastanabal, Micipsa's brother. He had served at Numantia under Scipio, along with his future conqueror Marius. There he had begun to intrigue with influential Romans for the succession to the Numidian kingdom, and had been rebuked by Scipio, who told him he should cultivate the friendship, not of individual Romans, but of the State. But in Jugurtha's heart a noble sentiment found no echo. Brave, treacherous, restless, an able commander, a crafty politician, adroit in discerning and profiting by other men's bad qualities, wading to the throne through the blood of three kinsmen, he in some respects resembles Shakspeare's Richard III.,—his 'prime of manhood daring, bold, and venturous,' his 'age confirmed, proud, subtle, sly, and bloody.' [Sidenote: Micipsa's will.] Micipsa had shared the kingdom with his two brothers, who died before him; and as this, which was Scipio's arrangement, had not worked badly in his own case, he in his turn left his kingdom between Adherbal, Hiempsal, and Jugurtha. Adherbal was weak and pusillanimous, Hiempsal hot-tempered and rash. Jugurtha, ten or fifteen years older than either, was the favourite of the nation, his handsome, martial figure and his reputation as a soldier according with the notions of a race of riders as to what a king should be. Hiempsal soon provoked him by refusing to yield the place of honour to him at their first meeting; and when Jugurtha said that Micipsa's acts during the last five years of his life should be held as null because of his impaired faculties, Hiempsal retorted that he agreed with him, for it was within three years that he had adopted Jugurtha. [Sidenote: Jugurtha gets rid of Hiempsal.] Hiempsal went to a town called Thirmida, to the house of a man who had been in Jugurtha's service. This man Jugurtha bribed to procure a model of the town keys, which were taken to Hiempsal each evening. Then his men, getting into Thirmida one night, cut off Hiempsal's head and took it to their master. He then proceeded to seize town after town; all the best warriors rallied to his standard, and in a pitched battle he defeated Adherbal, who fled to Rome, whither he had previously sent ambassadors imploring aid. Jugurtha also sent envoys with plenty of money, to be given first to his old comrades, and then to men likely to be useful. At once the indignation which the wrongs of the brothers had roused at Rome cooled down. [Sidenote: M. Aemilius Scaurus.] But M. Aemilius Scaurus, the chief of the aristocracy, seems to have been bidding for a higher price than was at first offered him, and by his influence ten commissioners were appointed to divide the kingdom. Scaurus had in his youth thought of becoming a money-lender, a trade in which he would certainly have excelled; and he may very likely have hoped to make something out of the commission, as the exemplary Opimius, murderer of Caius Gracchus, did. [Sidenote: Jugurtha bribes the commissioners.] This man, whom Cicero extols as a most excellent citizen, had opposed Jugurtha at Rome but being in consequence treated by the king in Numidia with marked deference, joined the majority of his colleagues in swallowing the bribes offered to them. So Adherbal received the eastern half which, though it contained the capital Cirta and better harbours and towns, consisted mostly of barren sand, while the more fertile portion was assigned to his rival.

[Sidenote: Jugurtha assails Adherbal, who appeals to the Senate.] This took place in the year 117 B.C. Scarcely had the commissioners left the province when the successful villain again took up arms. Adherbal, after much long-suffering and sending a complaint to Rome, was driven to do the same in self-defence. But he was defeated between Cirta and the sea, and would have been taken in Cirta had not the colony of Italians resident there beaten off the horsemen in pursuit. [Sidenote: A second commission, hoaxed or bribed by Jugurtha.] Meanwhile Adherbal's message had reached Rome, and the Senate, with its high sense of responsibility, sent ten young men to Numidia as adjudicators. Perhaps, indeed, it was not mere carelessness which sent these young hopefuls to the best school of bribery in the world. They were bidden to insist simply on the war ceasing, and the two kings settling their disputes by law. And yet the news of the battle and the siege of Cirta had reached Rome. Jugurtha came to them, and said that his merits had won Scipio's approval, and that, conscious of right, he could not submit to wrong; he then gravely charged Adherbal with plotting against his life, and promised to send ambassadors to Rome. Then the ten young men without even seeing Adherbal, left Africa, not we may conjecture so lightly laden as they came there.

The town of Cirta stood on the promontory of a peninsula formed by a loop of the river Ampsaga, and was almost impregnable. Modern writers represent it as a square spur, thrust out into a gorge which runs between two mountain-ranges, this gorge being spanned by a bridge at one corner of the square. The town, now known as Constantina, and distant 48 miles from the sea and 200 from Algiers, has been described as occupying a bold and commanding situation on a steep, rocky hill, with the river Rummel flowing on three sides of its base, the country around being a high terrace between the chains of the maritime and central Atlas. [Sidenote: Adherbal blockaded in Cirta.] Such being the strength of the place, Jugurtha could only hope to reduce it by blockade, and it was only after four months that two of Adherbal's men got out and carried a piteous appeal from their master to the Senate, adjuring them, not indeed to give him back his kingdom, but to save his life. [Sidenote: A third commission.] Some of the Senate were for sending an army to Africa at once, but in those days honest men were always in the minority, and three commissioners were sent instead—Scaurus, the man who had so lively an appreciation of his own value, at their head. [Sidenote: Jugurtha is admonished by it.] Jugurtha, after a desperate attempt to storm Cirta before they arrived, came to them at Utica, where he was admonished at great length. Then this precious trio left Africa, as the ten young men had done; and the surrender of Cirta followed, either because despair led its defenders to hope that submission, as it would save the enemy trouble, might conciliate him, or perhaps because water or food ran short. [Sidenote: Cirta taken and Adherbal murdered.] Jugurtha immediately tortured Adherbal to death, and put every Numidian and Italian in the place to the sword.

[Sidenote: Genuine indignation at Rome.] Then at last a thrill of genuine anger went through Rome. The honour of the State had been sorely wounded, but gold had been thus far a pleasant salve. Now, however, the equites were touched in their hearts at the fate probably of some of their own kinsmen, and almost certainly in an even more sensitive part—their purses. For no doubt there were commercial relations between the Italian community at Cirta and the Roman merchants, and here their gains were confiscated at one stroke by a savage. The senators, on the other hand, who had taken Numidian money, tried to quash discussion, and would have succeeded if the tribune, Caius Memmius, had not overawed them by his harangues. [Sidenote: War declared. Bestia sails to Africa.] Fresh envoys, who had been sent by Jugurtha with a fresh bribery fund, were ordered to leave Italy in ten days; and Bestia sailed for Africa, taking with him as his second in command Scaurus, who felt, no doubt, that a patriot was at last rewarded. [Sidenote: Jugurtha bribes the generals.] There was some fighting, and then the money from which Roman virtue had shrunk in Italy could be resisted no longer. The itching palm of Scaurus was at length filled as full as he thought mere decency demanded. Bestia was also gratified, Jugurtha's submission was accepted, hostilities ceased, and the consul sailed home to superintend the next year's elections.

[Sidenote: Harangues of the tribune Memmius.] But Memmius, justly incensed, now took a bolder tone. We cannot tell how far Sallust reports what he really said, or how far he drew on his own invention. But if he has given us Memmius's own words, they must have rung in the ears of many an honest Roman like the trumpet-notes of that still more eloquent tribune whose body, ten years before, had been hurled into the Tiber. For he cast in the teeth of his audience their pusillanimity in suffering their champions to be murdered, and allowing so worthless a crew to lord it over them. It had been shameful enough that they had witnessed in silence the plunder of the treasury, the monopoly of all high office, and kings and free states cringing to a handful of nobles; but now a worse thing had been done, and the honour of the Republic trafficked away. And the men who had done this felt neither shame nor sorrow, but strutted about with a parade of triumphs, consulships, and priesthoods, as if they were men of honour and not thieves. After these and similar home-thrusts, he called upon the people to insist on Jugurtha being brought to Rome, for so they would test the reality of his surrender. The tribune's eloquence prevailed. The praetor Cassius was sent to bring Jugurtha under a promise of safe-conduct. Jugurtha hesitated. Bestia's officers were treading in their general's steps, taking bribes, selling as slaves the Numidians who had deserted to them, and pillaging the country. Jugurtha was fast becoming the national hero instead of the chief of a faction, and might have even then dreamt of defying Rome. However, he yielded and, as it was not in his nature to do things by halves, came in the mean dress which was assumed to excite compassion. He did more. This was the year of the so-called Thorian law. [Sidenote: Jugurtha comes to Rome, and bribes the tribune Baebius.] Caius Baebius, who may have been the author of that law, was tribune, and not of the stamp of Memmius. He took Jugurtha's bribes, and when the king was being cross-questioned by Memmius, interposed his veto, and forbade him to reply. Thus once again, though the people were furious, the old plan seemed to be working well.

[Sidenote: Murder of Massiva.] But now a cousin of the king, named Massiva, a grandson of Masinissa, at the instigation of the consul Albinus, claimed the Numidian crown. In the present state of parties he was sure of support, so Jugurtha had recourse to the second weapon which he always used when the first was useless. He had him assassinated by his adherent Bomilcar, and assisted the latter to escape from Italy. At last his savage audacity had overstepped even the forbearance of the rogues in his pay. [Sidenote: Jugurtha expelled from Rome.] He was ordered to leave Rome, and, as he went, uttered the famous epigram, 'A city for sale, and when the first buyer comes, doomed to ruin!' [Sidenote: Futile campaign of Albinus.] It is possible that Spurius Albinus, who was next sent against him, was playing the game of Scaurus and Bestia over again; for he effected nothing in his campaign in 110. Nor does his brother's rashness exonerate him. Left as propraetor in charge of the army, this man, in January 109, determined to try and carry off Jugurtha's treasures by a coup de main. To do this he marched against Suthul, where the treasures were kept, at a season when the heavy rains turn the land into water. [Sidenote: Jugurtha overthrows Aulus Albinus.] Jugurtha retreated into the interior, enticing Aulus Albinus by hopes of coming to terms, and meanwhile tampering with his officers. Then, on a dark night, he surrounded the army. The traitors whom he had bribed deserted their posts. The soldiers threw away their arms, and next day Jugurtha forced Aulus to agree to go under the yoke, to make peace, and, perhaps, in mockery of the Senate's treatment of the Numidian envoys, to leave Numidia in ten days. Of course the Senate would not acknowledge the treaty. Nor did they even go through the farce of surrendering the man who had made it. The chivalry of the era of Regulus would have seemed quixotic to cynics like Scaurus. The other Albinus, hastening to Africa, found the troops mutinous, and could effect nothing. Another tribune now stepped forward to impeach all, whether soldiers or civilians, who had assisted Jugurtha to the prejudice of the State. In spite of the aid of the rich Latins, who had just been gratified by the remission of the vectigal, the senators were beaten and the bill passed. Triumvirs were appointed to investigate the matter; but one of them was Scaurus, sure to float most buoyantly where the scum of scoundrelism was thickest. [Sidenote: Banishment of Romans who had taken Jugurtha's bribes.] The judices were equites, and among those condemned were Bestia, Sp. Albinus, Opimius, and Caius Cato, the grandson of Cato the censor. Opimius died at Dyrrhachium, a poor man; and probably no harder punishment could have befallen him.

The history of the Jugurthine war has been thus far related at greater length than the space at command would warrant if it was merely a history of military details. But it is a striking commentary on the politics of the time and the vices of the government. The state of society could not be more succinctly summed up than in the words with which Jugurtha quitted Rome. What was it which made the nobles so greedy of money as to be lost to all shame in hunting for it? A speech supposed to have been delivered that very year partly answers the question: 'Gourmands say that a meal is not all that it ought to be unless, precisely when you are relishing most what you are eating, your plate is removed and another, and better, and richer one is put in its place. Your exquisite, who makes extravagance and fastidiousness pass for wit, calls that the "bloom of a meal." "The only bird," says he, "which you should eat whole is the becafico. Of every other bird, wild or tame, nothing, unless your host be a mean fellow, but the hinder parts will be served, and enough of them to satisfy everybody. People who eat the fore parts have no palate." If luxury goes on at this rate there will soon be nothing left but for them to have their meats nibbled at for them by some one else, to save them the toil of eating. Already the couches of some men are decorated more lavishly with silver and purple and gold than those of the immortal gods.'

If the war up to this stage had revealed the hopeless depravity of the senatorial government, its subsequent course revealed what shape the revolution about to engulf that government would assume. The consulship of Marius, won in spite of Metellus, signified really the fall of the Republic and the rise of monarchy, while the rivalry of Marius and Sulla showed that supreme authority would be competed for, not in the forum but the camp. The law of Manilius necessitated an earnest prosecution of the war. [Sidenote: Metellus appointed to the command against Jugurtha. His character.] Quintus Caecilius Metellus was elected consul for the year 109, and received Numidia as his province. He was a stern, proud man; but if in his childish hauteur he had a double portion of the foible of his order, he was free from many of its vices. He set to work at once to rediscipline the army; and his punishment of deserters, abominable in itself, was no doubt an effective warning that the new general was not a man with whom it was safe to trifle. The Romans were never gentle to the deserter unless he deserted to them. They threw him to wild beasts, or cut off his hands. Metellus did more. He buried 3,000 men to their waists, made the soldiers use them as targets, and finally burned them.

[Sidenote: Battle on the Muthul.] Jugurtha was alarmed, and sent to offer terms, asking only a guarantee for his life. Metellus returned evasive answers, and secretly intrigued with the messengers for the surrender or assassination of the king. But though assassination had become one of the recognised weapons of a Roman noble, Metellus was a novice in the art by the side of Jugurtha, who determined to die hard now he was at bay. The Romans had to cross a range of mountains, after which they descended into a plain through which the river Muthul (probably a branch of the modern Mejerda) ran eighteen miles off. Between them and the river was hilly ground—probably a spur from the range. On this hilly ground the king posted Bomilcar, with the infantry and elephants. He himself, with the best of the foot and the cavalry, waited nearer the mountains. Metellus saw the snare, but was obliged to get water, and in making for the river was surrounded. But the new discipline told. Though isolated, each Roman division fought bravely. Metellus and Marius carried the hills. Rufus dispersed the picked infantry, and killed or captured all the elephants. Jugurtha's plan was masterly, but it had failed. [Sidenote: Jugurtha keeps up a guerilla warfare.] His army dispersed, as such armies do upon defeat, and he was reduced to carrying on a guerilla warfare, spoiling the springs where Metellus was marching, and cutting off stragglers. Metellus split his army into two columns; Marius commanded one and he the other, and so they marched, ravaging the country and capturing the towns, ready to form a junction whenever it was necessary. At last they came to Zama; and, while Metellus was attempting to storm the town, Jugurtha surprised his camp. Though beaten off in this assault he attacked the Romans again next day, and Metellus was obliged to give up his enterprise. [Sidenote: Metellus tampers with Bomilcar.] After garrisoning the towns which he had taken, he went into winter quarters, probably at Utica, where he proceeded to tamper with Bomilcar. That traitor urged Jugurtha to surrender, and the king gave up his elephants, the deserters, and a large sum of money. But when it came to giving up himself his heart failed him, and, having discovered Bomilcar's treachery, he slew him, and once more resolved to fight.

[Sidenote: Marius stands for the consulship, 107 B.C.] The preceding military operations are supposed to have taken place in the year 108 B.C. Marius went to Rome to stand for the consulship, and while he was away, in 107, Metellus retained the command. Jugurtha's cause even now was not hopeless. The Numidians adored him, and were smarting under the Roman devastations. [Sidenote: Revolt of Vaga.] The chief town occupied by the Romans, Vaga—the modern Baja—revolted in the winter, and the commander, Turpilius, a Latin, rightly or wrongly was executed by Metellus for collusion with the enemy. But Metellus was eager to end the war, and pressed the king hard. Jugurtha lost another battle, and fled to Thala; but Metellus marched fifty miles across the desert, and forced him to flee by night out of the town, which was taken after a siege of forty days. But now a new enemy confronted the Romans. [Sidenote: Bocchus joins Jugurtha.] Bocchus, king of Mauretania, formed an alliance with his son-in-law, Jugurtha, and was induced by him to march against Cirta, which was in the possession of the Romans. About the same time Metellus heard that Marius was coming to supersede him. The proud man shed tears of rage, and would not move further for fear of hazarding his own reputation, or lessening the difficulties of his successor.

[Sidenote: Marius succeeds to the command.] The African war now promised hard work and little glory or profit to the soldiers, and Jugurtha's bribing days were over. Hence it was hard to recruit the legions, and Marius took men from the Proletarii and Capite Censi, classes usually exempt from service. With these troops, who would be more easily satisfied and more manageable, he filled up the gaps in the legions in Africa, and set to work, as Metellus had done, taking towns and forts and plundering the country. Bocchus had separated from Jugurtha, for they hoped that the Romans having two foes to chase would be the more easily harassed. But Marius was always on his guard, and beat, though he could never capture, Jugurtha whenever he came across him. [Sidenote: Capture of Capsa.] There is an oasis in the south of Tunis, and a town, Gafsa, in it, which in those days was called Capsa. This town Marius captured after a laborious march of nine or ten days, and, though the inhabitants surrendered, he ruthlessly massacred every adult Numidian in it, and sold the rest as slaves. One other exploit of his is told by Sallust, but with such blunders of geography as render identification of the place impossible. Carrying fire and sword through the land, Marius reached a fort in which the king's treasures were. It stood on a precipice, which was considered inaccessible on all sides but one. For many days he strove in vain to gain the walls by this road, and only an accident saved him from failure in the end. A Ligurian in the army, while gathering snails, unconsciously got nearly to the top of the hill. Finding this out he clambered further and got a full view of the town. [Sidenote: Capture of another stronghold.] Next day Marius sent ten men with horns and trumpets and the Ligurian as guide, while he himself assailed the town by the road. As soon as they were at the top he ordered an assault on the walls. The men marched up with their shields locked over their heads, and at the same moment the Roman trumpets were heard at the side of the town over the precipice. The Numidians fled and the fort was won.

[Sidenote: Marius marches for Cirta.] Here, wherever the place was, Marius was joined by Sulla with some cavalry; and having gained his end, he marched eastward towards Cirta, intending to winter his men in the maritime towns. [Sidenote: Attempts of Jugurtha to surprise his march.] But the Numidian king had nerved himself for one last desperate effort. By the promise of a third of his kingdom he bribed Bocchus to join him, and one night at dusk surprised the retiring army. Only discipline saved it. Like the English at Inkermann, the Romans fought in small detached groups, till Marius was able to concentrate his men on a hill, while Sulla by his orders occupied another hard by. The barbarians surrounded them and kept up a revel all night, deeming their prey secure. But at dawn Marius bade the horns strike up, and with a shout the soldiers charged down and dispersed the enemy with ease. Then the march went on till they were near Cirta. Again Jugurtha attempted to cut off the retreat. Volux, son of Bocchus, had brought him some fresh infantry. While the cavalry engaged Sulla, Bocchus led these men round to attack the rear. Jugurtha, who was fighting against Masinissa in the front, rode also to the rear, and, holding up a bloody head, cried out that he had slain Marius. The Romans began to give way, when Sulla, like Cromwell at Marston Moor, having done his own work charged the troops of Bocchus on the flank. Still Jugurtha fought on, and fled only when all around him were slain. The result of this battle was that Bocchus became anxious to come to terms. Sulla was sent to arrange them. But Bocchus hated the Romans, while he feared them; and fresh solicitations from Jugurtha made him again waver. [Sidenote: Negotiations of Bocchus with Rome.] Soon afterwards, by permission of Marius, he sent an embassy to Rome. The Senate replied that they excused his past errors, and that he should have the friendship and alliance of Rome when he had earned it. Then ensued intrigue upon intrigue. [Sidenote: Sulla persuades Bocchus to betray Jugurtha.] Sulla daringly visited Bocchus, and after some days' hesitation, during which Sulla pressed him to betray Jugurtha, and Jugurtha pressed him to betray Sulla, the Moorish king at last decided on which side his interests lay. The Roman devised a trap. The arch-traitor was ensnared, and was carried in chains to Rome, where he was led in his royal robes by the triumphal car of Marius, and, it is said, lost his senses as he walked along. One wonders with what relish Scaurus and his tribe, after gazing at the spectacle, sat down to their becaficoes that day. Then he was thrust into prison, and as they hasted to strip him, some tore the clothes off his back, while others in wrenching out his earrings pulled off the tips of his ears with them. And so he was thrust down naked into the Tullianum. 'Hercules, what a cold bath!' he cried, with the wild smile of idiocy, as they cast him in. [Sidenote: Death of Jugurtha.] For six days he endured the torments of starvation, and then died. [Sidenote: Division of the Numidian kingdom.] The most westerly portion of his kingdom, corresponding to the modern province of Algiers, was given to Bocchus, the rest of it to Gauda, Jugurtha's half-brother. The Romans did not care to turn into a province a country of which the frontiers were so hard to guard. But they received some Gaetulian tribes in the interior into free alliance, so that they had plenty of opportunities for meddling if they wished to do so.

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CHAPTER V.

THE CIMBRI AND TEUTONES.

The Jugurthine war ended in 105 B.C. In one way it had been of real service to Rome. A terrible crisis was at hand, and this war had given her both soldiers and a general worthy of the name. Before, however, the story of the struggle with the Cimbri is told, something must be said about what had been going on at Rome, about the man who had now most influence there, and about his rivals. [Sidenote: Recommencement of the social struggle at Rome.] The great social struggle had recommenced. The personal rivalry between Marius and Sulla had begun before the Cimbric war. During that war men held as it were their breath in terror, but nevertheless it was as if only an interlude in that deadly civil strife, for which each of the contending parties was already arrayed. C. Marius was now fifty years old. Cato, the censor, was of opinion that no man can endure so much as he who has turned the soil and reaped the harvest. Marius was such a man. His family were clients of the Herennii. His father was a day-labourer of Cereatae, called today Casamare, after his illustrious son, and he himself served in the ranks in Spain. [Sidenote: Previous career and present position of Marius.] Soon made an officer, he won Scipio's favour as a brave, frugal, incorruptible, and trusty soldier, who never quarrelled with his general's orders, even when they ran as counter to his own inclinations as the expulsion of all soothsayers from the camp before Numantia. On coming home he was lucky enough to marry the aunt of Julius Caesar, whose high birth and wealth opened the door to State honours, which to a man of his origin was at this time otherwise virtually closed. In 119 B.C. he was tribune, and had by the measures previously noticed won the reputation of an upright and patriotic politician, who would truckle neither to the nobles nor the mob. From this time, however, the feud with the Metelli began; for he ordered L. Caecilius Metellus, the consul, to be cast into prison for resisting his ballot-law, though, as the Senate yielded, the order was not carried into effect. In 115 he gained the praetorship, and an absurd charge of bribery trumped up against him indicated a rising disposition among the nobles to snub the aspiring plebeian. He was propraetor in Spain the next year, and showed his usual vigour there in putting down brigandage. With the soldiers he was as popular as Ney was with Napoleon's armies, for he was one of them, rough-spoken as they were, fond of a cup of wine, and never scorning to share their toils. While he was with Metellus at Utica, a soothsayer prophesied that the gods had great things in store for him, and he asked Metellus for leave to go to Rome and stand for the consulship. Metellus replied that when his own son stood for it it would be time enough for Marius. The man at whom he sneered resented sneers. There is evidence that the simple nature of the rough soldier was becoming already spoiled by constant success. He was burning with ambition, and would ascribe the favours of heaven to his own merits. He at once set to work to undermine the credit of his commander with the army, the Roman merchants, and Gauda, saying that he himself would soon bring the war to an end if he were general. Metellus can hardly have been a popular man anywhere, and his strictness must have made him many enemies. Thus he scornfully refused Gauda a seat at his side, and an escort of Roman horse. Gauda and the rest wrote to Rome, urging that Marius should have the army. Metellus with the worst grace let him go just twelve days before the election. But the favourite of the gods had a fair wind, and travelled night and day. The artisans of the city and the country class from which he sprang thronged to hear him abuse Metellus, and boast how soon he would capture or kill Jugurtha, and he was triumphantly elected consul for the year 107.

How his after achievements turned his head we shall see. Already there were drops of bitterness in the sweet cup of success. It was Metellus who was called Numidicus, not he, and it was Sulla whose dare-devil knavery had entrapped the king. The substantial work had been done by the former. The coup de theatre which completed it revealed the latter as a rival. Marius fumed at the credit gained by these aristocrats; and when Bocchus dedicated on the Capitol a representation of Sulla receiving Jugurtha's surrender, he could not conceal his wrath. [Sidenote: L. Cornelius Sulla.] In Sulla he perhaps already recognised by instinct one who would outrival him in the end. He was the very antipodes of Marius in everything except bravery and good generalship, and faith in his star. He was an aristocrat. He was dissolute. He was an admirer of Hellenic literature. War was not his all in all as a profession. If he had a lion's courage, the fox in him was even more to be feared. He, like Marius, owed his rise partly to a woman, but, characteristically, to a mistress, not a wife, who helped him as Charles II.'s sultana helped the young Churchill. If the boorish nature of the one degenerated with age into bloodthirsty brutality, the other was from the first cynically destitute of feeling. He would send men to death with a jest, and the cold-blooded, calculating, remorseless infamy of his entire career excites a repulsion which we feel for no other great figure in history, not even for the first Napoleon. Sulla's whole soul must have recoiled from the coarse manners of the man under whom he first won distinction, and, while he scorned his motives, he must, as he saw him gradually floundering into villainy, have felt the serene superiority of a natural genius for vice. But at present it was not his game to show his animosity. Though Marius had given fresh umbrage to the optimates by coming from his triumph (Jan. 1, 104 B.C.) into the Senate wearing his triumphal robes, with the people he was the hero of the hour, and when the storm in the North broke, it was the safest course for Sulla to follow the fortunes of his old commander, who in his turn could not dispense with so able a subordinate.

[Sidenote: Frontier wars of Rome previous to the Cimbric invasion.] The Romans were constantly at war on the frontiers. Besides the natural quarrels which would arise between them and lawless barbarians, it was the interest of their generals to make small wars in order to gain sounding names and triumphs. Such wars, however, by no means always ended in Roman victories; and while in the last thirty years of the second century before the Christian era there were many wars, there were also many defeats. [Sidenote: The Iapydes.] Sempronius Tuditanus had a triumph for victories over the Iapydes, an Illyrian nation; but he was first beaten by them. [Sidenote: The Salyes.] In 125 the Salyes, a Ligurian people, who stretched from Marseilles westwards to the Rhone and northwards to the Durance, attacked Marseilles. Flaccus went to its aid, and triumphed over the Salyes in 123. [Sidenote: The Balearic Islands.] Quintus Caecilius Metellus subdued the Balearic Islands in the same year, and relieved Spain from the descents of pirates, who either lived in those islands or used them as a rendezvous. The Salyes again gave trouble in 122, and Calvinus took their capital, which was most probably the modern Aix, establishing there the colony of Aquae Sextiae. This colony was the point d'appui for further conquests. The most powerful nations of Gaul were the Aedui and Arverni, whose territory was separated by the Elaver, the modern Allier. The Arverni were rivals of the Aedui and friends of the Allobroges, a tribe in the same latitude, but on the east of the Rhone. The Romans made an alliance with the Aedui, and the proconsul Domitius Ahenobarbus, in 122 or 121 B.C., charged the Allobroges with violating Aeduan territory, and with harbouring the king of the Salyes. [Sidenote: The Allobroges.] The Allobroges were helped by the Arverni, and Domitius defeated their united forces near Avignon, with the loss of 20,000 men. Fabius succeeded Domitius, and marched northwards across the Isara. [Sidenote: The Arverni.] Near its junction with the Rhone, on August 8, 121, he defeated with tremendous carnage the Arverni who had crossed to help the Allobroges. [Sidenote: Defeat of the Arverni, B.C. 121.] The number of the slain amounted, it is said, to 120,000 or 150,000. The king of the Arverni was caught and sent to Rome, and the Allobroges became Roman subjects. It was the year of the death of Caius Gracchus, of the famous vintage, and of a great eruption of Mount Etna. [Sidenote: The Staeni.] In 118 B.C. M. Marcius Rex annihilated the Staeni, probably a Ligurian tribe of the Maritime Alps, who were in the line of the Roman approach to South Gaul, and for this success he gained a triumph. In the same year it was resolved, in spite of the opposition of the Senate, to colonise Narbo, which was the key to the valley of the Garonne, and was on the route to the province of Tarraconensis. Thus was established the province named from the time of Augustus the Narbonensis, embracing the country between the Cevennes and the Alps, as far north-east as Geneva; and a road, called Via Domitia, was laid down from the Rhone to the Pyrenees. [Sidenote: The Dalmatae.] In 117 B.C. L. Caecilius Metellus triumphed over the Illyrian Dalmatae whom he had attacked without cause, or never attacked at all, as it was said, for which he was surnamed Dalmaticus. [Sidenote: The Karni.] In 115 M. Aemilius Scaurus, whose name we have met with before, triumphed over the Karni, a tribe to the north of the Adriatic. C. Porcius Cato, consul in 114, was not so lucky. [Sidenote: The Scordisci.] He lost his army in defending the Macedonian frontier against a tribe of Gauls called Scordisci, who were in their turn defeated by M. Livius Drusus in 112, and M. Minucius Rufus in 109 B.C. The year between their first victory and first defeat was remarkable, not, indeed, because one Metellus triumphed for what he had done in Sardinia, and another for what he had done in Thrace; but in that year the Cimbri came in collision with Rome. [Sidenote: First collision with Cimbri.] Cn. Papirius Carbo, the consul, was sent against them as they had crossed or were expected to cross the Roman frontiers. Some were in Noricum, and to them he sent to say that they were invading a people who were the friends of Rome. They agreed to evacuate the country; but Carbo treacherously attacked them, and was disgracefully beaten at a place called Noreia. [Sidenote: Defeat of Silanus.] Four years later, in the year 109, M. Junius Silanus, colleague of Marius, met the same barbarians, who had now crossed the Rhine, in the new province of South Gaul, and was in his turn defeated.

[Sidenote: The Cimbri rouse the Helvetii.] The movements of the Cimbri made the Helvetii restless. [Sidenote: Defeat of Longinus.] One of their clans, the Tiguroni, which dwelt between the Jura, the Rhone, and the lake of Geneva, defeated and slew the consul Longinus in 107 B.C., and forced his lieutenant, Popillius Laenas, to go under the yoke. Tolosa thereupon rose against the Romans, and put the troops which garrisoned it in chains. By treachery Q. Servilius Caepio recovered the town, and sent off its treasures to Marseilles. [Sidenote: The gold of Tolosa.] The ill-gotten gold, however, was seized on the way by robbers, whom Caepio himself was accused of employing. His name was destined, however, to be linked with a great disaster as well as a thievish trick. The Cimbri, who had hitherto petitioned the Romans for lands to settle on, were now meditating a raid into Italy. On the left bank of the Rhone, in 105, they overthrew M. Aurelius Scaurus, whom they took prisoner and put to death. Cnaeus Mallius Maximus commanded the main force on that side of the river, and he told Caepio, who as consul was in command on the right bank, to cross and effect a junction. But Caepio was as wilful as Minucius had shown himself towards another Maximus in the Second Punic War. When his superior began to negotiate with the Cimbri, he thought it was a device to rob him of the honour of conquering them, and in his irritation rashly provoked a battle, in which he was beaten and lost his camp. [Sidenote: Defeat of Caepio and Maximus.] The place of his defeat his camp is not known. Maximus was also defeated, and the Romans were reported to have lost 80,000 men and 20,000 camp followers. There was terrible dismay at Rome. The Gaul seemed again to be at its gates. [Sidenote: Consternation at Rome. Marius elected consul for 104.] The time of mourning for the dead was abridged. Every man fit for service had to swear not to leave Italy, and the captains in Italian ports took an oath not to receive any such man on board. Marius also was elected consul for 104.

[Sidenote: The Cimbri move off towards Spain.] But fortune helped the Romans more than all these precautions. The Cimbri, after wilfully destroying every vestige of the spoils they had taken, in fulfilment, probably, of some vow, wandered westward on a plundering raid towards the Pyrenees, the road thither having been lately provided, as it were, for them by Domitius. [Sidenote: Beaten back by Celtiberi, they are joined by the Teutones in South Gaul.] In the Celtiberi they met with foes who sold too dearly the little they had to lose, and again they surged back into South Gaul, where they were joined by the Teutones, and once more threatened Italy. [Sidenote: How the Romans had been occupied meanwhile.] But meantime the generals of the Republic had not been idle. Rutilius Rufus, the old comrade of Marius, had been diligently drilling troops, having engaged gladiators to teach them fencing. Probably Marius was engaged in the same work at the beginning of 104, and then went to South Gaul, where, as we hear of Sulla capturing the king of the Tectosages, he was no doubt collecting supplies and men, and suppressing all disaffection in the province. He also cut a canal from the Rhone, about a mile above its mouth, to a lake supposed to be now the Etang de l'Estouma; for alluvial deposits had made access to the river difficult, and he wanted the Rhone as a highway for his troops and commissariat. [Sidenote: Marius consul in 103 and 102 B.C.] In 103 he was made consul for the third time, and again in 102. And now he was ready to meet the invaders.

[Sidenote: Nationality of the Cimbri.] Who these invaders were has been a matter of hot dispute. Were they Celts? Were they Teutons? Did they come from the Baltic shores, or the shores of the Sea of Azof; or were they the Homeric Cimmerii who dwelt between the Dnieper and the Don? Or did their name indicate their personal qualities, and not their previous habitation? The following seems the most probable conjecture. In the great plain which runs along the Atlantic and the southern shore of the Baltic, from the Pyrenees to the Volga, there had been in pre-historic times a movement constantly going on among the barbarous inhabitants like the ebb and flow of a great sea. The Celts had reached Spain and Italy on the south, and Germany and the Danube on the east. Then, making the Rhine their frontier, they had settled down into semi-civilised life. Now the Teutonic tribes were in their turn going through the same process of flux and reflux; and impelled probably at this time by some invasion of other tribes, or possibly, as Strabo says, by some great inundation of the sea, these invading nations, for they were not armies but whole nations, came roaming southwards in search of a new home. Celts there were among them, for the Helvetii had joined them, and therefore Helvetic chiefs. But the names still exist in modern Denmark and near the Baltic. Caesar did not think they were Celts. The light hair and blue eyes of the warriors, and the hair of old age on the heads of children, which excited the astonishment of the Romans, are not Celtic characteristics. We may therefore set them down as Teutonic by race. The name Cimbri is probably derived from some word of their own, Kaemper, meaning champions or spoilers, and their last emigration was from the country between the Rhine, the Danube, and the Baltic. They were a tall, fierce race, who fought with great swords and narrow shields, and wore copper helmets and mail. [Sidenote: Their mode of fighting, etc.] The men in their front ranks were often linked together so as to make retreat impossible. Their priestesses cheered them on in battle, and, when prisoners were taken, cut their throats over a great bowl, and then, ripping them up, drew auguries from their entrails.

[Sidenote: Plan of the invaders.] The plan of the invaders was that one body, consisting of the Teutones, Ambrones, and Tugeni, should descend into Italy on the west, the Cimbri on the east. Whence the Teutones had come to join the Cimbri we do not know. They joined them in South Gaul. [Sidenote: The Ambrones.] The Ambrones may have been a clan of the Helvetii, as the Tugeni were. [Sidenote: Plan of Marius.] Marius waited for the western division at the confluence of the Isara and the Rhone, near the spot where Fabius had defeated the Arverni, his object being to command the two main roads into Italy, over the Little St. Bernard and along the coast. He did not follow the example of his old commander Scipio Aemilianus, in expelling soothsayers from his camp; for he had a Syrian woman, named Martha, with him to foretell the future. The soldiers had their own pet superstitions. They had caught two vultures, put rings on their necks and let them go, and so knew them again as they hovered over the army. When the barbarians reached the camp they tried to storm it. But they were beaten back, and then for six days they filed past with taunting questions, whether the Romans had any messages to send their wives. Marius cautiously followed, fortifying his camp nightly. They were making for the coast-road; and as they could not have taken their wagons along it, they were marching, as Marius had seen, to their own destruction. His strategy was masterly, for he was winning without fighting; but accident brought on an engagement. [Sidenote: Scene of the battle of Aquae Sextiae.] East of Aquae Sextiae (the modern Aix) Marius had occupied a range of hills, one of which is to this day called Sainte Victoire. The Arc flowed below. The soldiers wanted water, and Marius told his men that they might get it there if they wanted it, for he wished to accustom them to the barbarians' mode of fighting. Some of the barbarians were bathing; and on their giving the alarm, others came up, and a battle began. The first shock was between the Ambrones and Ligurians. The Romans supported the latter, and the Ambrones fled across the Arc to the wagons, where the women, assailing both pursuers and pursued with yells and blows, were slain with the men. So ended the first day's fight.

All night and next day the barbarians prepared for a final struggle. Marius planted an ambuscade of mounted camp-followers, headed by a few foot and horse in some ravines on the enemy's rear. [Sidenote: Circumstances of the battle.] He drew the legions up in front of the camp, and the cavalry went ahead to the plain. The barbarians charged up the hill, but were met by a shower of 'pila,' which the legionaries followed up by coming to close quarters with their swords. The enemy were rolled back down the hill, and at the same time with loud cries the ambuscade attacked them from behind. Then the battle became a butchery, in which, it was said, 200,000 men were slain, and among them Teutoboduus, their king. Others, however, say that he was taken prisoner, and became the chief ornament of Marius's triumph. Much of the spoil was gathered together to be burnt, and Marius, as the army stood round, was just lighting the heap, when men came riding at full speed and told him he was elected consul for the fifth time. The soldiers set up a joyful cheer, and his officers crowned him with a chaplet of bay. The name of the village of Pourrieres (Campus de Putridis) and the hill of Sainte Victoire commemorate this great fight to our day, and till the French Revolution a procession used to be made by the neighbouring villagers every year to the hill, where a bonfire was lit, round which they paraded, crowned with flowers, and shouting 'Victoire, Victoire!'