Note 55 — LIFE OF TIBERIUS GRACCHUS.

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

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

Plutarch’s perception of the early periods of Roman history was perhaps not strictly exact; but he comprehended very clearly the state of the parties in the age of the Gracchi. On the one side were the nobles and the rich, some of whom were noble and some were not; on the other side were the people, the mass, the poor. The struggle was now between rich and poor, and the rich often became the leaders of the poor for the purpose of political distinction and influence, and hence the name populares. Probably few states have ever presented the spectacle of the striking contrast between wealth and poverty which the Roman state exhibited from the time of the Gracchi; a class of rich, rich by hereditary wealth and by all the modes of acquiring wealth which the possession of office and the farming of the public revenues offered to them; a class of poor who were born poor, who had little industry and few means of exercising it. To this we must add, that though there were many cultivators in the country who might enjoy a moderate subsistence from their small estates, there was a city crowded with poor who had votes, and by their union and numbers mainly determined the elections and the acceptance or rejection of legislative measures. Rome, in fact, was the centre of all political agitation, and the result of a revolution in the city generally determined the dispute between two rival factions. We have still to take into the account a very numerous class of slaves. It is probable that in the earlier periods of Roman history the slaves were comparatively few; in the later republic they became very numerous. They formed a large part of the wealth of the rich, and they were always a dangerous body to the state. The effect of employing slaves generally in agriculture and other occupations was, as it always must be, unfavourable to industry among free men. Slaves, also, were often manumitted, and though the son of a manumitted slave was in all respects on the same footing as a complete Roman citizen, if his father was made such by the act of manumission, yet persons of this condition, and especially those who had been liberated from slavery, were looked upon as a somewhat inferior class. Their connection with the powerful families to which they had belonged, also gave such families great influence in all elections; and as we see in various instances, the class of libertini, manumitted slaves, was viewed as a dangerous body in the state. The equites at Rome can scarcely be called a middle class: they were generally rich and the farmers of the revenues, under the name of publicani. They were often opposed to the senate, but it was an opposition of pure interest, and their wealth made them rather the partisans of the aristocratical than of the popular body. Such were the political elements with which Tiberius Gracchus had to deal, when he attempted a reform which perhaps the times did not render practicable, and for which he certainly did not possess the courage or the judgment or the inflexible resolution which were necessary to secure success. The word in Plutarch which I have here translated nobles is δυνατοί, the powerful. In other places he calls them the rich (πλούσιοι), the possessors [of public land] (κτηματικοί), the aristocratical body (ἀριστοκρατικοί); and perhaps other terms. He calls the plebs, or people as opposed to this class, by various names, of which δῆμος is the most common: he also calls them the multitude (πλῆθος), the many (πολλοί), and other like names.

It is impossible to attain perfect precision in the use of political terms in a translation of Plutarch; and in order to be critically exact, it would be necessary to load these notes continually with remarks. But this critical exactness is not required here: the opposition of the two orders in the state is intelligible to everybody. The contests in Rome from the time of the Gracchi to the establishment of the monarchy under Augustus, were contests in which the rich and the powerful were constantly struggling among themselves for political supremacy; there was an acknowledged aristocratical and an acknowledged popular party. But the leaders of both parties, with perhaps some few exceptions, were mainly bent on personal aggrandisement. The aristocratical class had a clearer object than the leaders of the popular party: they wished to maintain the power of their order and that of the senate, which was the administering body. The leaders of the popular party could have no clear object in view except the destruction of the power of the senate: the notion of giving the people more power than they possessed would have been an absurdity. Accordingly the depression of the aristocratical body had for a necessary consequence the elevation of an individual to power, as in the case of Cæsar the dictator. Sulla, it is true, was an aristocrat, and he destroyed so far as he could the popular party; but he made himself dictator, and to the last day of his life he ruled all parties with a rod of iron.

The existence of a numerous and needy class who participated in political power without having any property which should be a guarantee for their honest use of it, was the stuff out of which grew the revolutions of Rome. There was a crowded city population, clamorous, for cheap bread, for grants of land, for public shows and amusements, averse to labour, constantly called into political activity by the annual elections, always ready to sell their votes to the best bidders; and a class always ready to use this rabble as a tool for their political and personal aggrandisement. Machiavelli observes (Istor. Fiorent. iii.) that the natural enmity which exists between the men of the popular party and the nobles (gli uomini Populari e i Nobili), proceeds from the wish of the nobles to command and of the others not to obey, and that these are the causes of all the evils that appear in states. He adds (iv.) that states, and especially those that are not well constituted, which are administered under the name of republics, often change their government and condition, but the fluctuation is not between liberty and servitude, as many suppose, but between servitude and licence. It is only the name of liberty which is in the mouths of the ministers of licence who are the popular leaders, and the ministers of servitude who are the nobles; both of them wish to be subject neither to the laws nor to men. These remarks, which are peculiarly applicable to Florence and the so-called republics of Italy of that time, apply equally to the Roman state. There are governments, however, to which the name republic can be properly applied, and that of Great Britain is one, which owing to the possession of certain elements have a more stable character. Still the general character of a popular and of an aristocratical party is correctly sketched by Machiavelli.