§ 1. So grave an evil is also frequent. The cause is that the human race is querulous, and because it is easy for every most wicked man to murmur. God led the people of Israel out of Egypt, out of the iron furnace, out of the house of bondage, through so many and such great miracles that Pharaoh himself was stupefied; and yet within the space of fifteen months it stirred up sedition against God ten times. Numbers 14:22: “Nevertheless, all the men who have seen my majesty and the signs which I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and have tempted me now ten times, and have not obeyed my voice.” It might seem wonderful that even one sedition could have been possible. There was no injustice of the magistrate. “You know,” says Moses, “that I have not taken even anyone’s ass.” There was no want: their garments were not worn away; the miracle of manna was daily; the Red Sea had withdrawn and swallowed the enemies; waters had been turned to sweetness, and new waters brought forth. Amid these wonders they murmur against God and persecute Moses the leader and Aaron, neither mollified by benefits nor terrified by plagues.
By the testimony of God that sedition lasted forty years: “Today, if you shall hear the voice of the Lord, harden not your hearts as in the provocation, according to the day of temptation in the wilderness, where your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works. For forty years I was near to this generation, and I said: They always err in heart; but they have not known my ways.” That state, therefore, beloved and chosen by God—that people whom the Lord blessed in its very liberation, in its departure from Egypt and from a barbarous people, in the very procession and triumphal passage while God was present—stirred up sedition ten times within fifteen months, and more frequently throughout forty years. What shall we judge concerning the peoples of the nations? They too had their tumults and destructions.
And, lest I withdraw far from Palestine, at the very time when the children of Israel wandered in the wilderness the neighboring kings waged wars among themselves. Sihon the Amorite obtained the kingdom of the Moabites from the Arnon as far as the Jabbok. The kings of the Canaanites, whose possession had been assigned to the Israelites, clashed among themselves so that, their strength now broken, they might be cast before the chosen people. For if Adonibezek had subdued seventy kings who gathered crumbs beneath his table with the extremities of their hands and feet cut off, who can doubt that very many of those kings were his kinsmen, since he dwelt in the midst of the Canaanites? Who also can doubt that those kings were conquered through war and sedition, with the destruction of many? Since, however, that calamity befell the most cruel tyrant after the death of Joshua, it is altogether certain that at the time when the Israelites were under Moses and Joshua there were already such great wars in Palestine, which was soon to perish. See the Book of Judges, chapter 1, verse 6. Now also, while I write these things, Christians are fighting before the gates of the Turks—lest they should ever be able to deny that they wish to perish.
§ 2 (part 1 of 3). Moreover, if from one and the same most powerful and best-known Roman state I collect the more notable seditions, I shall display the clearest example of human malice, which can bear neither empire nor liberty, and shall give all kings an outstanding lesson, so that they may be exceptionally cautious and well equipped to settle discords and remove tumults. Let us therefore weigh the contentions and conflicts of one city divided against itself; and, that we may summon all the graver ones from the beginning:
The first walls were drenched with a brother’s blood.
With this disposition the city grew up, which the characters of those brothers imparted to it. Nor was the end of Romulus happier: the plebs believed that, because of his rather harsh character, he had been torn apart by the hands of the Fathers, they say, and was hostile to the Fathers.
Then there was contention between the ancient Romans and Sabines as to from which faction the kings should be chosen, and it lasted for the year during which there was an interregnum, until the indignant plebs murmured: “Their servitude had been multiplied; a hundred masters had been made in place of one.” The words are Livy’s. Nor did they seem likely to endure thereafter any king unless created by themselves. When the Fathers perceived that these things were being set in motion, judging that what they were about to lose should be offered voluntarily, they thus entered into favor, and so forth. Sedition, therefore, was then begun, but it was dispersed by the prudence of the Fathers.
Under the rule of Numa no sedition is recorded. During the reign of Tullus the Roman colony of Fidenae revolted. Mettius Fufetius attempted treason. Thereafter most things were neither quiet nor turbulent down to Tarquin, who, after suborning the Senate, expelled his father-in-law Servius from the kingdom and killed him. For the sons of Ancus also arranged for Tarquinius Priscus to be killed, although they did not obtain the fruit of the crime, that is, the kingdom. The cause why the people stirred nothing was monstrous slavery; and when I weigh the matter, the condition of the Roman plebs at that time seems no happier than that of the children of Israel in Egypt under Pharaoh, and nevertheless he is numbered among the good kings by Livy, Florus, and the rest.
Livy says concerning him: “Works of peace were begun with a spirit greater than the mass with which he had waged war, so that the people might not be quieter at home than they had been in the field. For he prepares to encircle with a stone wall the city which he had not yet fortified—the beginning of which work had been interrupted by the Sabine war. And because the lowest parts of the city around the forum and the other valleys lying between the hills did not easily carry off the water from the level places, he dries them by sewers conducted down the slope into the Tiber. And, with his mind already foreseeing its future extent, he occupies with foundations the site for the temple of Jupiter on the Capitol which he had vowed in the Sabine war.” Thus Livy, serving the praise of his fatherland. But under what tyranny this was repeatedly done Pliny teaches in Book XXXVI, chapter 15: “An example not to be omitted from memory, all the more because it was omitted by the most celebrated founders of histories: when Tarquinius Priscus was causing that work to be done by the hands of the plebs, and the labor was uncertain whether longer or more dangerous, the Roman citizens everywhere escaping weariness by self-inflicted death, that king discovered a remedy new and unimagined before or afterwards: that he should fasten upon crosses the bodies of all who had thus died, to be viewed by the citizens and at the same time to be torn by wild beasts and birds.”
And this is the reason why the plebs remained quiet, oppressed by royal fear. Tarquin the Proud follows, whom they drove out after the city had been aroused to rebellion, having risen in tumult because of his adulterous son, whom perhaps it would not have been difficult to punish by the laws. But the occasion, the anger of those injured, and estrangement from the proud king set the sedition in motion by one impulse, pressed it forward, and completed what they had dared.
After the kings had been expelled, although great fear from them and diverse enemies threatened, the age was nevertheless not passed without sedition. The offspring of Brutus conspired against the fatherland with the noble youths and attempted to restore the Tarquins. Valerius came under suspicion of aiming at kingship, and was not safe until the house which he had begun was pulled down and the fasces lowered before the people. And indeed there was a fearful quiet at home from the year of the City 244 to the year 257; afterwards there were continual seditions or plans for seditions.
In the sixteenth year after the kings were driven out, the second after the death of Tarquin, an immense discord arose at Rome. Livy, Book II: “But the Volscian war was also impending, and the city, at variance with itself, was burning with internal hatred between the Fathers and the plebs, especially because of those bound for debt. They murmured that while fighting abroad for liberty and empire, at home they were captured and oppressed by citizens; and that the liberty of the plebs was safer in war than in peace, among enemies than among citizens. And a signal calamity of one man kindled that odium, which was growing of its own accord.
“A certain man threw himself into the forum with a great commotion, bearing the marks of all his evils. His garment was covered with filth; the condition of his body, consumed by pallor and emaciation, was fouler. In addition to this, his long beard and hair had made the appearance of his face savage. He was nevertheless recognized amid such disfigurement; they said that he had led companies, and the people, pitying him, recounted other distinctions of his military service. He himself displayed upon his breast the scars, witnesses of honorable battles in several places. When they asked whence that condition, whence that disfigurement, and a crowd had poured around him almost in the manner of an assembly, he said that while serving in the Sabine war, because, owing to the ravaging of his field, he had not only been deprived of its produce but his farmhouse had been burned, everything plundered, and his cattle driven off, and because a tax had been imposed at a time ruinous to him, he had incurred debt. That debt, swollen by interest, had first stripped him of his paternal and ancestral field, then of his other fortunes; at last, like a wasting disease, it had been drawn to his body, and he had been cast by his creditor not into slavery but into a workhouse and torture chamber. Then he displayed his back, foul with the recent marks of lashes.
“At the sight and hearing of these things an immense clamor arises. The tumult no longer confines itself to the forum but spreads everywhere through the whole city. Those bound and unbound for debt rush from every side into public and implore the good faith of the Roman citizens. Nowhere is a voluntary companion of sedition absent; in many columns everywhere, men run with shouting through all the streets into the forum. Those of the Fathers who happened to be in the forum fell into that crowd at great danger to themselves; nor would hands have been restrained had the consuls Publius Servilius and Appius Claudius not hastily intervened to suppress the sedition. But the multitude, turning upon them, displayed their chains and other disfigurement, each reproachfully declaring that this was what they had deserved, one here and another elsewhere, by his military service. Much more menacingly than as suppliants they demanded that they summon the Senate; and they themselves surround the senate-house as future arbiters and moderators of the public counsel.
“Very few of the Fathers, whom chance had presented, were gathered to the consuls; fear kept the rest not only from the senate-house but even from the forum. Nor could the Senate transact anything because of its sparse attendance. Then indeed the multitude began to think that it was being mocked and put off, and that those Fathers who were absent were absent not by chance or fear but for the sake of obstructing the business; that the consuls themselves were temporizing; and that their miseries were without doubt being made a mockery. Matters were now near the point where not even the majesty of the consuls could restrain the anger of the men, when at last, uncertain whether they would incur more danger by delaying or by coming, they came into the Senate; and even with the house at last well attended, there was not sufficient agreement, not merely among the Fathers, but not even between the consuls themselves.”
There were in fact so many bound for debt that a good part of the army was composed from them. The discords increased to such a degree that the Sabines took up arms, not from confidence in their strength but from contempt for the citizens who were quarreling. For the plebs held nightly meetings on the Esquiline and assembled on the Aventine. At last they resisted openly and seceded to the Sacred Mount. This was done in the year 260, when they created the tribunes of the plebs, a perpetual seed-bed of discords, until they were oppressed first by citizens and then by barbarians.
Then, in the year 262, they expelled Coriolanus, who after two years brought war upon his fatherland. Nor was there a long interval between. In the year 267, after the Volsci had been conquered, Spurius Cassius, aiming at kingship by an agrarian law and by the repayment of money for Sicilian grain, was put to death when accused of high treason.
Nevertheless, the sedition of the plebs did not cease; it aroused an external war in the following year and was ended by it. But soon after victory it grew raw again, as Livy warns. The sedition in the year 271 was most bitter. The army came to such a degree of madness that, when the cavalry had routed the approaching enemy, the infantry refused to follow; and, without the consul’s order, gloomy and cursing the cavalry’s renewed exertion, they returned to camp. Nor, however, did the tumult cease in the year 273. Levies were obstructed, until by the counsel of Appius they set the tribunes against one another.
The Italian peoples describe most truly the condition of the city at that time. Livy, Book II: “The Roman resources were eternal unless they should rage against one another in seditions. That one poison, that plague, had been discovered for wealthy states, so that great empires might be mortal. That evil, long sustained partly by the counsels of the Fathers, partly by the patience of the plebs, had now reached extremes. Two states had been made out of one; each party had its own magistrates, its own laws. At first they had been accustomed to rage in the levies; nevertheless, the same men had obeyed their leaders in war. Whatever the condition of the city, so long as military discipline remained, it had been possible to withstand it. Now the custom of disobeying magistrates was following the Roman soldier even into camp. In the most recent war, in the very battle line, in the very contest, by the agreement of the army victory was voluntarily handed over to the conquered Aequi: the standards were deserted; the commander was left in the battle line; they returned to camp without orders. Certainly, if the matter were pressed, Rome could be conquered by her own soldier. Nothing else was needed than that war be declared and displayed; the fates and gods would accomplish the rest of their own accord.” Who could say that Rome had been without sedition for any hour when in such a condition it raged against itself, when it preferred to be conquered and to lose everything rather than to conquer under a patrician leader?
Nor was it brought about by any means except deceit that they wished to fight, because they believed the commanders did not wish it. That estrangement and those contests between the orders persisted until, in the year 280, a tribune was killed at home and struck the others with fear. Yet it aroused greater hatred; they undertook the design of abolishing the consuls. Livy, Book II: “They said that it was all over.” Then for the first time the tribunes were created in the tribal assemblies; Piso is an authority that three were also added, just as though there had been two before. He also names the tribunes Gnaeus Siccius, Lucius Numitorius, Marcus Duellius, Spurius Icilius, and Lucius Mecilius. The Volsci and Aequi, amid the Roman sedition, when war had arisen, had ravaged the fields, so that if any secession of the plebs should occur, it might have a refuge with them. Then, when matters were settled, they moved their camps back.
Appius Claudius was sent against the Volsci; the province of the Aequi fell to Quinctius. The same savagery of Appius was present in military service as at home, all the freer because he was without the bonds of the tribunician power. He hated the plebs more than with his father’s hatred, because he saw himself conquered by it: and that with him alone chosen as consul a law had been carried against the tribunician power which earlier consuls, with less effort and by no means so great a hope of the Fathers, had prevented. This anger and indignation spurred his fierce mind to harry the army with a cruel command. Nor could it be tamed by any force, so deeply had they imbibed the contest in their spirits. They did everything sluggishly, idly, negligently, and contumaciously; neither shame nor fear restrained them. If he wished the column to be driven more swiftly, they deliberately walked more slowly. If he was present as an exhorter at a work, all of their own accord relaxed the industry they had set in motion. In his presence they cast down their faces; as he passed they silently cursed him—so that that spirit, unconquered by plebeian hatred, was sometimes moved. After every severity had been employed in vain, he no longer had any dealing with the soldiers; he said the army had been corrupted by the centurions, whom in mockery he sometimes called “tribunes of the plebs” and “Voleros.”
The Volsci were ignorant of none of these things, and pressed on all the more, hoping that the Roman army would have the same contest of spirit against Appius that it had had against the consul Fabius. But it was much more violent under Appius than under Fabius. For it did not merely refuse to conquer, as the Fabian army had done, but wished to be conquered. Led out into the battle line, it sought the camp in shameful flight, and did not stand until it saw the Volscian bringing the standards against the fortifications and the foul slaughter of the rear of the column. Then force was wrung from it to fight, so that the enemy, already victorious, might be driven from the rampart. It appeared sufficiently, however, that the Roman soldier had been unwilling only for the camp to be taken; some rejoiced in their own disaster and ignominy.
The fierce spirit of Appius was in no way broken by these things. When he wished to rage further and summoned an assembly, the lieutenants ran to him and the tribunes warned him not to wish at any cost to make trial of command, whose whole force lay in the agreement of those who obeyed. They said that the soldiers everywhere refused to go to the assembly, and voices demanding that the camp be moved from Volscian territory were heard on all sides: the victorious enemy had shortly before been almost at the gates and rampart, and not merely suspicion but the manifest appearance of immense evil was before their eyes. At last he yielded—since in any event they would gain nothing except time for punishment—and, dismissing the assembly, after he had ordered the march to be proclaimed for the following day, at first light he gave the signal for departure by trumpet. Just as the column was in the very act of deploying from the camp, the Volsci, as if roused by the same signal, attacked the rearmost. The tumult, carried from them to the foremost with such panic, disordered standards and ranks so that neither commands could be heard nor the battle line arrayed. No one remembered anything except flight. Thus they escaped in a scattered column through a devastation of bodies and spirits, so that the enemy ceased pursuing before the Roman ceased fleeing. This occurred in the year of the City 282.
While discord remained, in 284 the utmost violence was feared. Then the plebs refused to take part in the consular elections, always restless, always hostile.
In the year 286 there were renewed contests over the agrarian law, and Volscian land was granted for founding a colony at Antium, but most disdained it. Immense dangers brought some quiet; but after they had been discharged from them in the year 291, all domestic evils grew raw again, so that the consul had to be recalled. For in the absence of the consuls the tribunes sought time for their actions. The struggle became more bitter in the following year. The consuls held a levy; if they seized anyone, the tribunes ordered him to be released. Caeso, driven out by fear of trial, was soon followed by a thousand Caesos in place of one, but they eluded the tribunes by art throughout the entire year.
Thus far there had been dissensions; but in the year 293, when a servile band under the leadership of Herdonius had occupied the Capitol and affairs were placed in the utmost crisis, the tribunes called the people away from arms. It was evident that the utmost violence would follow and that the Roman sedition would be a spectacle to the enemies; nevertheless neither could the law be carried nor the consul go to the Capitol. Night suppressed the contests begun; the tribunes yielded to night, fearing the arms of the consuls. When the authors of the sedition had been removed from there, the Fathers went around among the plebs, thrust themselves into their circles, and sowed speeches suited to the time. They admonished them to see into what crisis they were bringing the state: the contest was not between the Fathers and plebs; rather the Fathers and plebs together were surrendering to enemies the citadel of the city, the temples of the gods, and the public and private household gods.
How astonishing that Roman citizens had been blinded by such obstinate discord that, although Manlius, dictator of the Tusculans, was coming to their aid, they were nevertheless not moved by their own danger and had to be entreated to be willing to defend themselves against their own slaves. But the fact that the tribunes even then protested surpasses all madness. Rightly, therefore, did the consul Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus affirm in the following year that the tribunes were enemies worse than Herdonius. But nevertheless they attempt to obstruct the levy—
§ 2 (continued; part 2 of 3). —and the plebs reelects the same tribunes.
In the year 295 Quinctius Cincinnatus, as dictator, dispersed the external dangers after the enemies had increased; the plebs reelected the same tribunes for a fifth time. And so in the year 296 they would have come to the most extreme contentions had not the Aequi and Sabines brought greater destructions. The garrison at Corbio had been lost through a nocturnal attack of the Aequi; the Sabines were ravaging the Roman fields. Nevertheless, the citizens had been unwilling to serve unless they extorted permission to create ten tribunes. This obstinacy lasted into the year 302, when envoys were sent to Greece and decemvirs constituted, by whose labor the laws might be written. But not even thus did they have more than one halcyon year. The plebs, offended by the lust of Claudius and by a judgment given in favor of slavery against liberty, went up from the camp to the Aventine, then to the Sacred Mount; they compelled the decemvirs to abdicate and restored the consuls and tribunes. They demanded the decemvirs for the funeral pyre. There had been no greater sedition up to that time, for they were armed.
The plebs, sated by the punishment of the Fathers, became somewhat quiet, but there was nevertheless no concord; for while the plebs was quiet, the younger Fathers did not cease from injury. Livy describes it thus: “Then Geganius Macerinus and Gaius Julius were made consuls. They quieted the assemblies of the tribunes which had arisen against the noble youth without assailing their power, preserving the majesty of the Fathers. By postponing the levy decreed for the war with the Volsci and Aequi, they kept affairs free from seditions, affirming that when there was tranquility in the city all things abroad also were tranquil; concern for peace was also the cause of concord at home. But the one order was always burdensome to the moderation of the other. When the plebs was quiet, injuries began to be done by the younger Fathers. When the tribunes came to the aid of the humbler men, at first they had too little power; then not even they themselves were inviolate, especially in the last months, both because injury was done through coalitions of the more powerful and because all the force of the power was somehow more languid in the latter part of the year. And now the plebs placed some hope in the tribunate if it had tribunes like Icilius; for two years it had had only the name.
“The elders among the Fathers, on the contrary, believed that the young men were too fierce; yet if measure had to be exceeded, they preferred that courage should be excessive among their own men rather than among their adversaries. So difficult is moderation in protecting liberty: while each man, by pretending that he wishes to be made equal, raises himself so as to press down another; and by taking care lest they fear, men make themselves objects of fear in advance. And we impose upon others an injury repelled from ourselves, as if it were necessary either to do it or to suffer it. Titus Quinctius Capitolinus, for the fourth time, and Agrippa Furius were then made consuls. They inherited neither sedition at home nor war abroad, but both threatened. Discord among the citizens could now be restrained no longer, with the tribunes and plebs incited against the Fathers, when the appointment of a day for the trial of some noble always disturbed the assemblies with new contests. At the first uproar of these assemblies, as if a signal had been received, the Aequi and Volsci took up arms.” These things were done in the year 306, and the discord of the orders remained, as Cincinnatus then used to say—the poison of the state—“while neither with us is there a limit to command nor with you a limit to liberty.”
In the year 308 a new flame of sedition blazed forth. For Canuleius proposed a law concerning intermarriage between the Fathers and the plebs; and gradually mention was introduced that it should be permitted to make one of the consuls from the plebs, and the proposal was carried. This seemed so grave to the Fathers that they heard with joyful spirits that three wars were arising at the same time; for they hated the fortunate seditions of the plebs and the honored authors of seditions more than external wars. Most truly they said that more war was being stirred up at home than abroad.
At last, in the year 309, after bitter contests, military tribunes with consular power were created. When the state seemed more peaceful, Spurius Maelius suddenly aimed at kingship and relieved the people by a distribution of grain. He was killed by Servilius Ahala; in the year 314 Servilius was driven into exile. But when the tribunes and leaders of the plebs perceived themselves to be despised by the plebs, they set many things in motion in the following years, especially in the year 329, but with fruitless effort. For although what was done in the year 330 against Sempronius was done with an evil intention, I do not number it among seditions. Then, two years later, when the number of quaestors was to be doubled, a contest arose that some should be created from the plebs. Although they obtained this and plebeians were passed over, the tribunes, inflamed by the rejection, began to rage. In the year 334 the slaves had conspired against the city, but, having been detected, they paid the penalty.
In the year 336 matters again came to the utmost danger because of the agrarian laws. The Fathers dispersed them by drawing certain tribunes over to their own party; their colleagues accused those tribunes before the people as traitors to their interests. In all these years, therefore, either there was sedition or it was being prepared.
In the year 339 a sedition begun at Rome reached the camp, in which a military tribune was buried beneath stones by the army. The offense arose from the words of Titus Postumius: “Evil to my soldiers unless they keep quiet.”
The year 341, full of sedition, was rendered moderate by pestilence.
In the year 344 the partisanship of the Fathers and plebs blazed forth because three plebeian quaestors had been created, by which the hope of the plebs was raised and fear cast into the Fathers. Livy, Book IV.
In the year 347, when the booty taken at Anxur had been divided among the army and pay had been decreed, there was greater affection between the plebs and the Senate than at any earlier time whatsoever, although in the same year the tribunes had repeatedly declared: “The greatest war of the Fathers is with the plebs. It is deliberately to be harassed by military service and cast before the enemy to be slaughtered.” But when pay was decreed, Livy says in Book IV: “Nothing, it is reported, was ever received by the plebs with such joy. And so there was a gathering at the senate-house, and the hands of those departing were grasped; they were called Fathers in truth, the plebeians confessing that it had been brought about that no one, so long as any strength remained, would spare either his body or his blood for so munificent a fatherland; since it pleased them that their household property at least should rest during the time in which their body was bound and devoted to the state.” The tribunes nevertheless grumbled against it, but were despised.
But soon, when they were making huts at Veii in order to winter there, the tribunes of the plebs rose up, but in vain. For when a defeat had been received at that same Veii, through a great renewal of concord between the orders new soldiers were sent, with the cavalrymen promising that they would serve upon their own horses and then the infantrymen offering their labor. But while money was being contributed by the unconquered, the tribunes, having again found an occasion, attempted to contrive discords. Livy, Book V: “One war had now been protracted into a third year and was deliberately being badly conducted so that they might conduct it longer. Then armies had been enrolled for four wars by one levy, and even boys and old men had been dragged out. There was now no distinction of summer or winter, lest the wretched plebs ever have any rest. It had now even been made tributary to the final degree, so that when they had brought back bodies exhausted by labor, wounds, and finally age, and found everything at home uncultivated because of the owners’ long absence, they should pay tribute from an impaired estate and return manifold to the state their military pay as if received at interest.”
Then there was a new discord because of the tribunes of the plebs,
and a greater one because of the military tribunes. For in the year 353, when the tribunes of the plebs forbade the payment of tribute and pressed that military tribunes be created from the plebs, they filled the city and almost the camp with seditions. One tribune was created from the plebs and then one patrician; by this it came about that in the year 355 the Fathers, as if about to lose the supreme command, all exerted themselves and obtained their object. At last, in the following year, agreement was reached that the greater part should be created from the plebs.
After Veii had been captured in the year 358, there was again an immense sedition, men continually saying that a colony ought to be led to Veii and demanding fields. This sedition was fouler than the rest. In the year 360 consuls were created and all things were conducted with the greatest bitterness; there was a greater war at home than abroad. And at last in the year 362 Camillus went into exile. Then followed the defeat at the Allia, the burning of the city, and the siege of the citadel. Not even by the very destruction of the city did they change their disposition, for it was urged with all their strength that they should migrate to Veii.
Then, in the year 368, when matters had come to extremes and the Senate stood as though in battle line against the plebs, Manlius was cast into prison, though nevertheless released; but when he was said to have aimed at kingship, he was cast down from the rock.
In the year 373 there was again sedition because of those bound for debt, which only the enemy near the walls suppressed. The plebeians now seemed oppressed and unable to oppose the Fathers in any way.
In the year 376 an immense contest arose from a small matter. For five years no curule magistrate was made, the elections being obstructed by the intervention of the tribunes. That sedition, therefore, lasted five years. At last, with Camillus as dictator and with Manlius and others resisting in vain, Lucius Sextius was made the first consul from the plebs. Livy, Book VI: “A triumph was decreed to the dictator Camillus by the agreement of the Fathers and plebs. When he had scarcely discharged the war, a more dreadful sedition at home received him; and through immense contests the dictator and Senate were conquered, so that the tribunician proposals were accepted, and the consular elections were held against the will of the nobility, in which Lucius Sextius was made the first consul from the plebs. Nor was even that the end of the contests, because the patricians declared that they would not furnish their authorization. The matter almost came to a secession of the plebs and other terrible threats of civil contests. Nevertheless, the discords were settled by the dictator upon conditions: the plebeian consul was conceded by the nobility to the plebs, and by the plebs to the nobility one praetor, who should administer justice in the city, to be created from the Fathers.”
Then there was quiet for some time, until in the year 397 Gaius Marcius Rutilus, dictator from the plebs, named a master of horse from the plebs.
In the year 399 the contention was so great that Livy says: “They went down into the Campus several times in vain, and many electoral days were consumed by seditions. At last the grief of the plebs, conquered by the perseverance of the consuls, burst forth to such a degree that, while the tribunes shouted that liberty was at an end and that not only the Campus but even the city, captured and oppressed by the dominion of the patricians, must now be abandoned, the sorrowful plebs followed them.”
In the year 401, however, spirits inclined toward concord, nor was there any great movement in the city until the year 411, when the soldiers who had been at Capua infected almost the entire army with their conspiracy.
But lest I pursue every individual thing, I shall send them all into a compendium. From the year 412 to 432 the Latins and Campanians rebelled and ordered that one of the consuls be chosen from their own body. The Privernates also rebelled; nor will you easily find so many years without sedition, but the causes were immense and the wars most bitter, and therefore they created very many dictators in those years. Nevertheless, because those wars were waged by subjects who were revolting, they can rightly be called seditions and rebellions.
In the year 439 an immense terror of factions and coalitions burst forth, not only at Rome but also at Capua and in other places, so much so that Gaius Maenius was designated dictator to conduct investigations. The result, however, was that the investigation was suppressed by the power of the faction against which it had been prepared. A rather long peace was then followed by a greater sedition. Few things are reported about it because its history has perished. It occurred in the year 467. Sigonius writes thus about it in the Fasti: “Zonaras adds that at this time a sedition was excited by a law concerning new account books promulgated by the tribunes of the plebs and obstructed by the creditors, and that it was not settled until the enemies invaded the city.” Augustine, moreover, writes thus about the same affair in Book III of The City of God: “After grave and long seditions of the Romans, at last the plebs seceded to the Janiculum with hostile devastation. So dire was the calamity of this evil that for this affair the dictator Hortensius was created, who, after the plebs had been recalled, expired in that same magistracy, something which had happened to no dictator before.” It must be noted that he says “after grave and long seditions,” lest we suppose it a movement of only one year.
Down to the year 512 the wars of the Tarentines, Pyrrhus, Carthage, the Ligurians, and Sardinians diminished domestic seditions—although I think that writers were lacking for the seditions more than seditions for the Romans. There are certainly many and evident signs. What of the fact that not even when Hannibal was devastating Italy was there genuine peace at Rome? Livy, Book XXII: “In his interregnum elections were held amid a great contest of the Fathers and plebs. The populace was striving to draw even Gaius Terentius Varro to the consulship—a man of his own class, commended to the plebs by attacks upon the leading men and by popular arts, and shining through another’s unpopularity after the resources and dictatorial command of Quintus Fabius had been shaken. The Fathers resisted with their utmost effort, lest men accustomed to attacking them should be made their equals. Bibulus Herennius, a tribune of the plebs and kinsman of Gaius Terentius, by accusing not only the Senate but even the augurs because they had prevented the dictator from completing the elections, won favor for his candidate through hatred of them. Hannibal had been brought into Italy by noble men who for many years had sought war; when he could be utterly conquered, that war was being protracted by deceit by those same men.”
Nor were contests afterwards lacking, when the tribunes obstructed the elections lest Fulvius, the dictator designated, be made consul. In the eighth year after the battle of Cannae, twelve colonies refused auxiliaries, soldiers, and money, by which such great fear was cast into men’s spirits that most said that the empire was finished.
A tribune accused Marcellus and the whole nobility. Livy, Book XXVII: “By their deceit and delay it came about that Hannibal now had Italy as his province for a tenth year and had lived there longer than at Carthage. The Roman people possessed the fruit of command prolonged for Marcellus: his army had been cut down twice and was passing the summer under roofs at Venusia.” These things occurred in the tenth year of the Punic War, so that it may appear how entirely there was no concord in the state, unless the fear of the most cruel enemy effected some.
Hence it is that about the same time Livy introduces Marcus Livius full of anger against Hasdrubal. It has been handed down to memory, Livy says in Book XXVII, that when Quintus Fabius warned Marcus Livius, as he was departing for war still full of anger against the citizens, not to join battle rashly before he had learned the character of the enemy, he answered that he would fight when first he saw the enemy’s column. When it was asked what cause there was for haste, he said: “Either from the enemy I shall obtain outstanding glory, or from my conquered citizens joy—certainly deserved, even if not honorable.” What disorders would not such a spirit—
§ 2 (continued; part 3 of 3). —would that spirit not produce, for which citizens and soldiers stood in the same place as enemies? Indeed, in a worse place: from enemies he was going to obtain outstanding glory; from slaughtered citizens, joy. For although Hannibal suppressed seditions, he nevertheless did not bind the citizens together by mutual affection. Certainly, in the year 549, when the Carthaginian had now been driven from Italy, the notable enmities of Marcus Livius and Gaius Claudius appeared in their censorship.
But that you may see that the tribunes had changed in no respect, read in Livy, Book XXXI, the things which they declaimed under a law against the Macedonian War in the year 552. Baebius, tribune of the plebs, entering upon the ancient road of accusing the Fathers, had charged that wars were sown from wars lest the plebs ever be able to enjoy peace. A sign of this also is that Scipio Africanus avoided tribunician harassments by exile; his brother Asiaticus was condemned in so great a sum that it was not found among his goods, when the praetor had sent quaestors to take public possession of them. Then followed the customary contests and the conspiracies and corruptions of the Bacchanalia, concerning which Livy, Book XXXIX.
It is also agreed that the same difficulties existed in levies, because the tribunes cast Aulus Postumius and Albinus into prison when they conducted the levy severely, because they were not able to obtain exemption for their kinsmen. And this is that age concerning which Florus writes in Book III, chapter 12: “The first hundred years of this age were holy, pious, and, as we have said, golden, without disgrace and without crime, while the integrity of that pastoral way of life was still sincere and harmless, and while the threatening fear of the Carthaginian enemies contained the ancient discipline. But the last hundred years, from the destruction of Carthage to Caesar, were wretched and worthy of shame because of domestic calamities.”
What I said concerning the preceding years, however, must be understood thus: revolts of allies, treasons, and dissensions were not lacking; but because greater care held their spirits, discord in the senate-house and city languished. For in Spain the matter was conducted against subjects for twenty years, and likewise against the Ligurians, the Alpine peoples, and the Illyrians. Indeed, Andriscus wrested away subject Macedonia, and Alexander then occupied another part of it. Then, in the year 606, there was discord because of the consulship of Scipio, who set out for Africa and destroyed Carthage, and afterwards Numantia—wars which certainly arose from the rebellions of subjects.
In the year 618 Eunus and Cleon waged a servile war in Sicily, and not without immense loss to the state; for they captured the camps of four praetors: Manlius, Lentulus, Piso, and Hypsaeus. What sedition, moreover, is greater and more hostile than when slaves rise against their masters?
In the year 620 the sedition began which furnished the causes of the evils that followed, by which the state at last utterly perished. Epitome, Book LVIII: “Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, tribune of the plebs, when he proposed an agrarian law against the will of the Senate and equestrian order, that no one should possess more than ten iugera of public land, blazed forth into such madness that, after passing a law, he deprived his colleague Marcus Octavius, who defended the cause of the opposing party, of his power; and he created himself, his brother Gaius, and his father-in-law Appius Claudius triumvirs for dividing the land. He also promulgated another agrarian law by which, if anyone possessed land more widely, the same triumvirs should judge which was public land and which private. Then, when there was less land than could be divided without offense even to the plebs—since he had incited them to an ample desire by the limit of their hope—he showed that he would promulgate a law that the money which had belonged to King Attalus should be divided among those who ought to receive land by the Sempronian law. Attalus, king of Pergamum, son of Eumenes, had left the Roman people his heir.
“The Senate was gravely moved by so many indignities, and before all others the consul Titus Annius. When he had delivered a speech against Gracchus in the Senate, he was seized by him, brought before the people, and again addressed him before the rostra. When Gracchus wished to be created tribune of the plebs again, he was killed on the Capitol by the optimates upon the urging of Publius Cornelius Nasica, struck first with fragments of benches; and among the others who had been killed in the same sedition, he was cast unburied into the river.”
After this calamity had been received, the following years were deadly. At Rome all things were dreadful because of investigations against the followers of Gracchus; in Sicily, because of the cruelty of the slaves. Then followed the Aristonicus war when a great part of Asia revolted, so that the state was harassed by an external and internal evil.
In the year 623, when Carbo proposed a bill that the people might reelect the same man as tribune as often as it wished, defeated by Scipio he was unable to carry it through. But in the following year all seditions blazed forth more sharply as the triumvirs for dividing the land stirred them up. Scipio, who spoke against it, was found dead on the following day; no one investigated the parricide. While the Gracchan sedition continued, Marcus Fulvius proposed other ruinous laws and incited the Italians to seek citizenship. Hence Fregellae was destroyed in the year 628; in the year 632 Gaius Sempronius Gracchus was killed, and the head of the slain man was purchased for gold.
In the year 642 Jugurtha prepared war; Nearer Spain rebelled. Amid these things the hatreds of the people and Senate remained, and a little later they poured themselves out upon Caepio, who had been defeated in the Cimbrian War. Cicero teaches in Book II On the Orator that it was a sedition, that in it there were violence, flight, stoning, and tribunician cruelty, in which Marcus Aemilius, leading man of the state and Senate, was struck with a stone.
In the year 650, amid the utmost fear of the Cimbrian War, Marius was designated consul for a fourth time through sedition. He had no other beginning of his rise than his persecution of the nobility; and so, as his consulships proceeded, contests lasted throughout them. Marius had scarcely triumphed over the Cimbri when an immense sedition burst forth. It is narrated thus by Livy’s epitomator, Book LXIX: “Gnaeus Apuleius, with the aid of Gaius Marius and after killing Aulus Nonius, his competitor, through the soldiers, was created tribune of the plebs by force and administered the tribunate no less violently than he had sought it. And when he had carried an agrarian law by force, he appointed a day for the trial of Metellus Numidicus because he had not sworn to it. Since Metellus was defended by good citizens, lest he should be a cause of evil contests, he set out into voluntary exile at Rhodes, and there was free from great cares by reading and hearing.”
Assuredly Gaius Marius, author of the sedition, who had purchased his sixth consulship with money scattered through the tribes, forbade him fire and water. The same Apuleius Saturninus, tribune of the plebs, killed Gaius Memmius, candidate for the consulship, whom he especially feared as an adversary to his actions. The Senate having been aroused by these events against him, and Gaius Marius—a changeable man of shifting counsel and disposition, who had always passed over to prosperous fortune—being utterly unable to protect him, he was overwhelmed by arms and killed with the praetor Glaucia and other companions of the same madness by a certain Rabirius. Quintus Caecilius Metellus was recalled from exile with the immense favor of the whole state. Marcus Aquilius the proconsul brought to an end the servile war stirred up in Sicily. At the same time Athenion the fugitive waged war in Sicily. Amid these things there was contention at Rome, until the Italian War began in the year 658.
There was indeed immense discord because the equestrians administered judgments and condemned innocent men. “Publius Rutilius,” says Epitome LXX, “a man of the greatest innocence, because as legate of Gaius Mucius,
the proconsul, he had defended Asia from the injuries of the publicans, was hated by the equestrian order, in whose possession the courts were; condemned for extortion, he was sent into exile. Gaius Geminius fought unsuccessfully against the Thracians. Since the Senate was unwilling to bear the impotence of the equestrian order in administering judgments, it began to strive with all its force that the courts be transferred to itself, Marcus Livius Drusus, tribune of the plebs, sustaining its cause. In order to acquire strength for himself he aroused the plebs with the ruinous hope of largesse.” These things at Rome were done against Mucius; the Asians instituted feast days for him which they called the Mucian days.
In the year 662 the Drusan sedition, which drew after it the Social War, was excited. Epitome LXXI: “Marcus Livius Drusus, tribune of the plebs, in order that the Senate might defend with greater strength the cause it had undertaken, solicited the allies and Italian peoples with the hope of Roman citizenship. With their help, after the agrarian and grain laws had been carried by force, he also carried the judiciary law, so that the courts should be in equal part in the possession of the Senate and the equestrian order. When the citizenship promised to the allies could not then be furnished, the angry Italians began to agitate for revolt.” Epitome LXXII writes concerning it: “The Italian peoples revolted—the Picentes, Vestini, Marsi, Paeligni, Marrucini, Samnites, and Lucani—the beginning of the war having been made by the Picentes. Quintus Servilius the proconsul was killed in the town of Asculum with all the Roman citizens who were in that town. The people assumed military cloaks. Servius Galba, captured by the Lucani, was freed from captivity by the labor of one woman with whom he lodged. The colonies Aesernia and Alba were besieged by the Italians.”
That war was most dangerous and most grave, with great defeats received and inflicted on both sides. When it was ended, a crueler civil war followed, than which nothing is better known in Roman history.
Nor were those parricides only among allies. Fimbria killed his commander Valerius Flaccus; meanwhile Asia was exposed to be devastated by Mithridates.
In the year 669 Sulla oppressed the Marian party; many perished. In the following year he entered Italy. In the year 671 there was that bloody dictatorship in which:
The guilty perished,
but when now only the guilty could survive.
Then there was the kingship of Sulla. He recovered Nola and Volaterrae, overthrew Mytilene, and distributed forty-seven legions among the captured lands.
In the year 673 the Sertorian War was waged in Spain. It arose from the remnants of the Sullan proscription, and in it Roman commanders were defeated.
Nor was there an end of factions when Sulla abdicated the dictatorship. Lepidus, his enemy and consul after his death, attempted to rescind his acts and recall the exiles, but was defeated. Even after Sulla died, sedition grew raw again. Sallust introduces a tribune complaining thus: “For you have understood that hope was vain. When Sulla, who had imposed a wicked slavery, was dead, you believed it the end of evil; there arose Catulus, far more savage. Tumult intervened in the consulships of Brutus and Aemilius; then Gaius Curio domineered to the point of destroying an innocent tribune. You have seen with how great a spirit Lucullus went against Lucius Quinctius in the preceding year.”
In the year 676 Lepidus came with an army hostile to his fatherland, but was driven from Italy by Catulus and Pompey; and yet the Roman people hated Catulus more than Lepidus. In the year 678 this was the condition which Sallust describes. “You have made us consuls, Roman citizens,” Cotta says, “when the state is most entangled at home and in war. For the commanders in Spain ask for pay, soldiers, arms, and grain, and necessity compels it, since through the revolt of the allies and Sertorius’s flight through the mountains they can neither join battle nor prepare useful things. Armies are maintained in Asia and Cilicia because of the immense resources of Mithridates. Macedonia is full of enemies, and no less the seacoasts of Italy and of the provinces, while meanwhile the revenues, small and uncertain because of wars, scarcely sustain a part of the expenses. Thus we sail with a smaller fleet than before to convey provisions. If these things have been accumulated by our deceit or sloth, act as you please and exact punishment thus; but if our common fortune is rather harsh, why do you undertake things unworthy of you and us?”
In the year 680 the war of Spartacus began. In that same year Sertorius was killed and left Marcus as heir of the war. When these wars had been finished, in the year 683 Pompey the Great and Crassus the Rich as consuls restored the tribunician power entire and stabilized their own power. The matter came to such a point that in the year 687, through dissensions and ambition, certain men conspired—Piso, Catiline, and Antonius Paetus. At that time there was a great dissension among the army of the Mithridatic War between Lucullus and Pompey.
But the conspiracy of Catiline was detected in the year 690, when Cicero was consul. In the following year the conspirators were defeated. Nevertheless, seeds of war remained among the optimates.
In the year 693 a coalition was made among the three leading men Pompey, Crassus, and Caesar. For although they were enemies among themselves and powerful, and the people hated Pompey, the Senate Caesar, and most men Crassus, they equally mocked friends and enemies. Suetonius writes these things in his Julius: “Caesar courted Pompey with every service when he was offended by the Fathers because, after King Mithridates had been conquered, his acts were confirmed rather tardily; and he reconciled Marcus Crassus to Pompey, his ancient enemy from the consulship which they had administered together in the greatest discord. He entered into an alliance with both, lest anything be done in the state which displeased any of the three. In his consulship he gave Julia to Pompey and himself married Calpurnia, daughter of Piso, the future consul.”
Caesar as consul carried agrarian laws, transferred Clodius to the plebs, and compelled his colleague Bibulus to keep himself at home. Clodius, now a plebeian and made tribune of the plebs, expelled Cicero; after Cicero’s return Milo killed Clodius. The Roman people proscribed Ptolemy without cause. In the year 701 armed and contentious candidates for the consulship obstructed the elections. Then Pompey, having been made consul, scarcely suppressed the sedition.
He then carried a law that account should be taken of Caesar in his absence, which Marcellus attempted to break in the following year. These contentions afterwards became stronger in the years that followed, when on the occasion of the Parthian War two legions were led away from Caesar, until the civil war began in the year 704. In that war Pompey was driven from Italy; his lieutenants were defeated in Spain; Pompey was defeated at Pharsalus and killed by the Egyptian; the Pompeians were defeated in Africa; and at last:
The final battles meet at deadly Munda.
But Caesar was killed in the year 710 and left behind the wars of Mutina, Philippi, Perusia, and Sicily, and the killings of the triumvirs, until, after Antony was conquered at Actium, Augustus alone obtained the Roman state. And such was the condition of the Roman state for more than seven hundred years: agitated by continual dissensions, it kept Senate and plebs exercised, and produced more evils at home than abroad. If princes consider these things and weigh the causes of seditions, they will procure great aids for settling or preventing them.