SEVEN ROMAN STATESMEN.* WE welcome Mr. Oman's eloquent and lively
book, not merely for its own merits, but because it carries us back to the good old days when heroes still kept a place in history. For many years we have heard so much of popular tendencies, racial characteristics, political developments, that it has seemed as if personality counted for nothing. But as Mr. Oman well says, "the blessed word 'evolution' will not account for everything," and though the anecdotic style of history may have had its faults, the impersonal style misses the truth altogether. For there can be no doubt that great men have profoundly changed the course of events, and however much the pedants may declaim against the drum and trumpet," heroes are often better worth study- ing than peoples, not only from the point of view of romance, but from the point of view of justice. Mr. Oman has another rare and conspicuous merit. He is not a specialist. He does not shut up history in water-tight periods. He
• $even Boman Statesmen of the Later Republic. London : E. Arnold. L5s.:1
By Charles Oman, BLA.
recognises that to-day may afford the best comment upon yesterday, and he makes the decline and fall of the Roman Republic all the clearer by modern illustration.
The period is well chosen to enforce his theory. "In the last century of the Roman Republic," he says, "we find ourselves in a time of dominating personalities." If the early history of Rome was the history "of great achievements done by men who were not great," it may be said that the later history of the Republic was dominated by men who were far greater than what they achieved. For instance, that which was achieved by the Gracchi was little enough and bad enough; yet the brothers possessed the temperament of leaders, and profoundly influenced their country. Rhetoricians both, they took up more space in the world than their fellows, and, though such men are a danger to their contemporaries, they may be contemplated by the eye of history with interest and impartiality. A more mischievous statesman possibly never lived than Tiberius Gracchus, yet so insistent was his per- sonality that he was hailed for a genius before he was a man, and be still appears to some a type of the generous self- sacrificing politician. "How long am I to be called the daughter of Africanus and not the mother of the G-racchi ?"
asked his mother in a phrase which has given her the immortality she deserved for hitting upon it. "If Tiberius said that a thing was right," remarked his tutor, "right of course it must be " ; and with such a tutor one is not surprised that Tiberius was three parts a prig.
But he was a prig with a capacity for action, and he very soon set himself up as a saviour of society. "If Tiberius had been merely fortunate and virtuous," says Mr. Oman, "he might have gone through life with honour and success, have gained his consulship, celebrated his triumph, and have been buried in peace in the tomb of his ancestors. Unhappily for him and for Rome, he had enough brains to see that the times
were out of joint, enough heart to feel for the misfortunes of his countrymen, enough conscience to refuse to leave things alone and take the easy path to success that lay before him, and self-confidence to think that he was foreordained by the gods to set all to rights." Accordingly, he determined to save Rome, and the particular evil which he resolved to remedy was the decay of agriculture. Now the agriculture of Rome was obviously depressed. It was depressed, says one historian, by the ravages of Hannibal. It was ruined, says another, by the growth of the latifundia, the large holdings worked by gangs of slaves. Mr. Oman agrees with neither the one nor the other; he prefers to believe that the latifundia were the effect, not the cause, of the depression. "The fact simply was," he believes, "that under the stress of foreign competition corn-growing was ceasing to pay in many parts of the peninsula. There is a point at which the freeholder, even if he is as frugal as the old Roman farmer, and even if he lives mainly by the consump- tion of his own produce, will refuse to stop any longer on the soil, more especially when the alternative is not emigration to the Fax West, but removal to the capital, with all its urban pleasures, its cheap food, and its opportunities of living with. out the back-breaking toil of plough and mattock." In other words, Rome was passing through a crisis such as we have passed through. There had been, and was, a rural exodus.. The country folk were beginning to prefer a life of idleness in Rome to the strenuous cultivation of the soil; and while Tiberius saw the effect, he did not understand the cause. Therefore, with the best intentions and the most unfortunate results, he determined to resettle the people upon the soil. With this purpose in mind, he urged that the State should resume the possession of all public lands which were held under the tenure called possessio, and bestow them upon poor citizens. This was, of course, a direct interference with vested interests. The possessores had built houses and reared temples upon the land that had been granted them ; they had established there their household gods ; and quite naturally they declined to give up the land without a struggle. At first Tiberius offered compensation; but when the possessores remained obdurate, be resolved to dispossess them altogether, and thus created a compact body of enemies which was his undoing. Thereafter be became a man of one idea, a democrat who believed that every means was justified by the end which he had in view. He violated the Constitution, he trampled upon the laws, and he met with the not uncommon
reward of his kind,—a violent death. His temperament is not rare, and is &sally intelligible: he had so vast a faith in himself that he believed he could do no wrong. No sooner was he hindered in the accomplishment of his design than he was prepared to sacrifice the Fatherland itself to success. Mr. Oman thinks that such a man is a criminal if he knows what he is doing; a dangerous madman if he does not know. He would .class Tiberius Gracchus among the madmen; but in politics motive is less important than effect, and a man may ruin his country with the best possible inten- tion. Briefly, Tiberius Gracchus deserved the death which overtook him because his virtuous incapacity involved others than himself, and because those who assume the responsibility of government assume it at their just peril.
Cahn; Gracchus was more adroit and less single-minded than his brother, yet probably he injured his country even more deeply than Tiberius. If, as is suggested, he was moved as much by revenge as by pedantry, there is little to be said in his defence. Moreover, he loved power as he loved his life, and he dreamed of making the tribunate perpetual, that he might usurp a permanent control of the State. But the worst thing that he did was to sell corn to the citizens at a patty figure, and so to prepare the direst dangers which ever threatened Rome. "More than any other single man," says Mr. Oman, "he was responsible for the growth of that mass of paupers asking for nothing but panem et circenses, which in a few generations was to represent the sovereign people of Rome." Truly, those statesmen whose temperament is greater than their intelligence are the worst misfortune which can overtake a State. Even if their inten- tions axe good, their power for evil is limitless; and no two men ever did more harm with a better hopefulness than the two Gracchi.
For the rest, we can do no more than refer to Mr. Oman's brilliant analysis of Sulla, that pattern of public virtues and private vices, and protest against his estimate of Caesar, which is not ours. But every page of his brilliant book is worth reading, and we cannot wish a young student better luck than to come across it before the austerity of the Germans Las killed his interest in the history of Rome.
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