The Gracchi Marius and Sulla Part 8

Sulla increased the six praetors to eight, and made the two years'

term of office the legal term. But if this added to their power in appearance, he diminished it in reality by separating the civil from the military functions altogether. The consuls and praetors were to manage the civil business of Rome. The proconsuls and propraetors were to command the army. In the first year of office the two consuls had the general administration of Rome, and two of the praetors its judicial administration. The other six presided over the various courts. In the second the ten exercised the imperium in Sicily, Sardinia, the two Spains, Asia, Africa, Macedonia, Cilicia, and the two Gauls, and none of them might stay in his province beyond thirty days after his successor's arrival; or, under penalties for treason, might leave his province during his term; or attack a foreign power without express leave from home. [Sidenote: Effect of the new scheme.]

The effect of all this is plain. Whereas formerly the magistrates, directly elected in the Comitia, might combine civil and military authority, now the military authority could only be held by those whose term of office was prolonged by the Senate's pleasure; for, though the practice became invariable, it remained at the Senate's discretion to break through it when it chose.

[Sidenote: Co-optation restored to the colleges.] Fifthly, having thus lessened the power of the censors, consuls, praetors, and tribunes, he by way of compensation--a serio-comic compensation it must have seemed to his shrewd yet superst.i.tious mind--restored the right of co-optation to the sacred colleges of augurs and pontiffs, and increased their numbers, thus multiplying harmless objects of rivalry a.n.a.logous to the ribands and garters of modern courts.

Sixthly, he took away from the equites and restored to the Senate the judicia.

[Sidenote: Restoration of the Judicia to the Senate.] The judicia have been often mentioned, and something maybe said about them here. In civil suits the praetor, as we have seen, had the superintendence.

Sometimes he decided a case at once. Sometimes, if he thought the case should be tried, he appointed a judex, giving him certain instructions by which after the investigation he must decide the case. His action here would be something like one of our judge's charges, but given before hearing the evidence. There is nothing to prove that a judex of this kind was at this time taken from any special cla.s.s, or that Sulla interfered with the established mode of procedure. [Sidenote: Organisation of criminal courts.] It was about the const.i.tution of the criminal courts that the long struggle had raged between the Senate and equites and here he made great changes. He found some permanent criminal courts (e.g. the Quaestio de Repetundis, or court for investigating cases of extortion in the provinces) already in existence. He inst.i.tuted or settled others; but it cannot be ascertained how many of the following, which were in existence after his time, were due to him. There were at least nine of these permanent courts (Quaestiones Perpetuae): the Quaestio Majestatis; de vi; de sicariis &c; de veneficiis; de parricidio; de falso; de repetundis; peculatus; ambitus; or courts for trying cases of treason, violence, a.s.sa.s.sination, poisoning, parricide, forgery, extortion, embezzlement, and bribery. And there may have been more, e.g. de adulteriis and de plagiis, for trying cases of adultery and the enslavement of freemen.

[Sidenote: Procedure in the courts.] His object in consolidating them was to take from the Comitia the settlement of criminal cases, and to obviate the necessity for appointing special commissions. For there was no appeal from the quaestio, and a special commission was seldom requisite when so many courts were available.

To preside in these courts there were six praetors; but, as there were more courts than praetors, a senator, called judex quaestionis, was appointed annually for each court where a president was wanting, something after the fashion by which one of our judges sometimes in press of business appoints a barrister as his deputy to clear off the cases. The praetor, or judex quaestionis, presided over the judices in each court, and the judices returned a verdict by a majority of votes, sometimes given by ballot, sometimes openly. In choosing these judices this was the process. The whole number available was, it is said, 300, divided into three decuriae. In any given case the praetor named the decuria from which the jurymen were to be taken, and then drew from an urn containing their names the number a.s.signed by law for the case to be decided. Each side could then challenge a certain number, and fresh names were drawn from the urn in place of those challenged. What Sulla did was to supply these decuriae from the senators instead of the equites.

One of the permanent courts found by Sulla already existing was that of the Centumviri, who had jurisdiction over disputed inheritances.

The members of it were elected by the tribes, three by each tribe, 105 in all. Though it was directly elected by the people, Sulla could apprehend no danger from such a court, and did not meddle with it.

[Sidenote: Other measures attributed to Sulla.] Other measures are attributed to Sulla on evidence more or less probable, such as the suppression of gratuitous distributions of corn; the abolition of the right of freedmen to vote, and of the reserved seats appropriated to the equites at public festivals; the re-establishment in Asia of fixed taxes instead of the farming system; the extension of Italy proper from the Aesis to the Rubicon, and the conversion of Cisalpine Gaul into a province. It may be considered certain that he did all that he could to humiliate the equites; but the settlement of Italy was probably not due to him.

[Sidenote: His minor measures.] Other minor laws of which he was the author dealt with specific criminal offences or social matters. One, as we have seen (p. 196) specified the penalties for all sorts of a.s.sa.s.sination and poisoning. Another dealt with forgery, another with violence to the person or property, another with marriage and probably adultery. Another was a sumptuary law, which is said to have limited the price of certain luxuries. If this was the case it was even sillier than other sumptuary laws, for it would have encouraged instead of checking gluttony. Lastly, there was a law for the settlement of his colonies through Italy, and at Aleria in Corsica.

[Sidenote: Effects of Sulla's legislation.] Sulla had for the moment undone by his legislation the work of ages. He gagged free speech by the disabilities attached to the tribunate. He kept the government within a close circle by his process of recruiting the Senate. He made the magistrates subordinate to the Senate. He filled Italy and Rome with his own partisans, and therefore with those of the Senate, and he gave back to the Senate that coveted possession of the judicia for which it had struggled so long with the equites. But a system which could endure only by the repression not only of hostile interests but of the ambition of its own adherents carried in itself the seeds of early dissolution. Almost before the reaction was complete a counter-reaction had begun. Abdication only revealed monarchy, and the broad road which Sulla had laid over the breakers and quicksands of revolution in reality paved the way to a throne.

[Sidenote: Sulla's abdication a farce.] When be abdicated, he offered to render account to anyone for his acts, and there is a story that one young man thereupon followed him to his home loading him with abuse, which Sulla listened to with meekness. If the story be true, the incident was probably a pre-arranged part of the ceremony of abdication, which in everything, except the fact that Sulla slipped off the cares of government, was of course a farce. His funeral showed what his real power continued to be, and, if another anecdote be true, just before his death he had a magistrate of Puteoli strangled because he had not collected in time his town's subscription to the restoration of the Capitol. He had in fact done mischievously what the Gracchi would have done beneficently; and greedy swordsmen occupied the soil which the tribunes would have divided peaceably among peaceable men. [Sidenote: The policy of the Gracchi justified by after events.] The civil wars and the triumvirates are the best vindication of the policy of the Gracchi, unless we can bring ourselves to fancy that the Gracchi created, instead of attempting wisely to satisfy, the demands of the age. By an orderly intermixture of Italians and foreigners with the corrupt body of Roman citizens new life might have been infused into the old system, and something foreshadowing modern representative government have been established, without proscription or praetorian rule. As it was, the vices of society only became aggravated at an era of violence, and the sharpest remedies failed to stay the creeping paralysis by which it was a.s.sailed.

The gradual depopulation of Italy has already been described. In spite of Sulla's colonies the ruin of the country must have been vastly accelerated by his civil wars and those which followed them. And, while the honest country cla.s.s was dying out, the town cla.s.s was ever plunging deeper into frivolity and voluptuousness. To defray the cost of the sumptuous life of the capital the fashionable spendthrift was forced to resort to extortion in the provinces, which, as we have seen, became so crying an evil that a permanent court existed for dealing with it before the time of Sulla. The greedy throve on usury, or involved the State in war, to fill their own purses. The fortunes ama.s.sed by an Aquillius, a Verres, a Lucullus, spoke as eloquently of Rome's rapacity abroad as did those of Cra.s.sus or Sulla in Italy. Such being the state of things under the government which Sulla strove to perpetuate, his character as a statesman deserves as strong reprobation as his conduct as a man. To lay down power from a sense of duty is one thing. Cynically to shrink from responsibility is another.

The misery of the following half-century must be laid chiefly at Sulla's door. The inevitable goal to which everything was tending was as patent in his time as in the time of Augustus. Whatever may have been for the interest of the Roman aristocracy, monarchy was by this time for the interest of the Roman world.

LIST OF PHRASES

_It has been suggested that the following List of Phrases occurring in the History may be useful. But the definitions are only approximately precise._

_Aerarium_. The State treasury.

_Capite Censi_. Roman citizens rated by the head only, as having no property.

_Cives Romani_. Citizens of Rome, a Roman colony, or a Municipium.

_Clientes_. Dependents of the Patres. Free, but not Cives Romani.

_Comitia Centuriata_. The subdivisions (193 or 194 in number) of the six cla.s.ses into which the Romans were divided, according to property, were called Centuries, and the a.s.sembly of them Comitia Centuriata.

_Comitia Tributa_. The a.s.sembly in which the people voted according to the tribes or territorial divisions.

_Dominium_. Ownership.

_Equites_. Originally the men rich enough to maintain war-horses; afterwards the rich cla.s.s corresponding to our city men.

_Flamen_. A priest of some particular G.o.d.

_Frumentaria_. Lex. A law for cheapening corn.

_Imperator_. The t.i.tle given on the battle-field to a successful general by his soldiers.

_Imperium_. The power given by the State to an individual who was to command an army.

_Interrex_. An official appointed to hold an election of consuls when the regular mode of election had not been followed.

_Judicia_. Bodies of jurymen (judices) who tried criminal cases.

_Jugerum_. A measure of surface 240 feet long, 120 broad.

_Just.i.tium_. A suspension of public business for some religious observance.

_Latifundia_. Large estates cultivated by slave-labour.

_Latini_. See p. 16.

_Legati_. Officers of the general's suite corresponding to our generals of division.

_Libertini_. The cla.s.s of freedmen known as Liberti, with reference to freeborn men, Libertini with reference to each other.

_Municipia_. Conquered Italian towns having the right of acquiring property in the Roman State (Commercium), and marrying the daughter of a Roman citizen (Connubium), but unable to acquire the honours of the State (Jus Honoris), or to vote at Rome (Jus Suffragii).

_Negotiatores_. Money-lenders.

_n.o.biles_. The offspring of men who had held a curule office.

_Optimates_. The senatorial party at and after the era of the Gracchi.

_Patres_. 1. Originally Cives Romani, the governing body at Rome. 2.

Afterwards the Senate.

_Patronus_. A Pater with reference to a Client. A Dominus with reference to a Libertus.

_Perduellio_. Abuse of official position injurious to the State.

_Pilum_. A wooden shaft 4 feet long, with an iron head 2 feet 3 inches long. There was also a lighter kind.

_Plebiscitum_. 1. A resolution of the people. 2. Equivalent to lex.

_Plebs_. Originally the free citizens of Rome who had no political privileges.

_Populares_. The anti-senatorial party at and after the time of the Gracchi.

_Possessor_. An occupier of public land.