[39] It appears that at this time the quæstors had their provinces assigned by lot, and this was the case under the Empire. (Tacitus, _Agricola_, c. 6.) The functions of a quæstor were of a civil kind, and related, in the provinces, to the administration of the public money. He was a check on the governor under whom he served when he was an honest man: sometimes the quæstor and governor agreed to wink at the peculations of each other.
[40] Caius Hostilius Mancinus was consul with Marcus Æmilius Lepidus B.C. 137. Numantia, which gave the Romans so much trouble, was situated in Old Castile on the Douro, but it is not certain what modern site corresponds to it.
[41] The Romans used the words Iberia and Hispania indifferently to denote the Spanish Peninsula. From the word Hispania the Spaniards have formed the name España, the French Espagne, and the English Spain. The river Ebro, which the Romans called Iberus, is a remnant of this old name. The Iberi originally occupied a part of Southern Gaul (the modern France) as far east as the Rhone, where they bordered upon the Ligurians. They were a different people from the Celtæ, who in the time of C. Julius Cæsar occupied one of the three great divisions of Gaul.
(_Gallic War_, i. 1.) The Celtæ, at some unknown time, crossed the Pyrenees and mingling with the Iberi, formed the Celtiberi, a warlike race with whom the Romans had many wars, and over whom Tiberius, the father of Tiberius Gracchus, gained a victory. (Note, c. 1.) It is maintained by William Humboldt in his work on the original inhabitants of Spain (_Prüfung der Untersuchungen über die Urbewohner Hispaniens_) that the present Basque is a remnant of the Iberian language, which he supposes not to have been confined to Spain, but to have spread over part of Italy, the south of France, and the islands of Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica. Thucydides (vi. 2) says that the Sicani, or old inhabitants of Sicily, were Iberi who were driven from the river Sicanus in Iberia by the Ligurians.
The name Iberia was also given by the Greeks and Romans to a part of that mountainous region, commonly called the Caucasus, which lies between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. The Albani and Iberi were the two chief nations that occupied this tract; the Albani were between the Caspian Sea and the Iberi, who were their neighbours on the west. The great river Cyrus (Kur) flowed through Albania into the Caspian. Iberia was partly surrounded by the mountains of the Caucasus and it bordered on Armenia and Colchis: the river Cyrus was the chief river (Strabo, 499, ed. Casaub.). There is no evidence that these Iberi of the Caucasus were related to the western Iberi. The country was invaded by the Romans under L. Lucullus and Pompeius Magnus.
[42] The allusion is to a memorable event in the Samnite war. The consuls Spurius Postumius Albinus and Titus Veturius Calvinus B.C. 321, with their army, were caught by the Samnites in the pass called Furculæ Caudinæ, and they were compelled, in order to save themselves, to submit to the ignominy of passing under the yoke. The Roman senate rejected the terms which had been agreed on between the consuls and the officers of the army on the one side, and the Samnites on the other. It was not a treaty (foedus) as Livius shows, for such a treaty could not be made without the consent of the Populus nor without the proper religious ceremonies. (Liv. 9, c. 5.) The senate, upon the proposition of Postumius himself, sent to the Samnites all the persons who were parties to the agreement and offered to surrender them, but the Samnites would not receive them and they upbraided the Romans for want of good faith.
Mancinus also supported the proposition for his own surrender to the Numantines, and he was offered to them in due form by the officer called the Pater Patratus, but the Numantines declined accepting him. (Cicero, _De Officiis_, iii. 30.) The principle that a general could not formally make a treaty, and that all treaties required the sanction of the senate or in earlier times perhaps of the patrician body in their assembly, appears to be well established. Those who made the treaty with a Roman general might not know this constitutional rule, but the principle on which the Romans acted in such cases was sound, and the censure that has been directed against them as to their conduct in such transactions, proceeds from ignorance of the Roman constitution and of the nature of the power which a sovereign state delegates to its ministers. Delegated power or authority never authorises the persons to whom it is delegated to do an act which is inconsistent with the constitution or fundamental principles on which the sovereign power is based.
Mancinus returned to Rome and ventured to appear in the senate, but a question was raised as to his right to be there, for it was argued that a man who had been so surrendered ceased to be a citizen and could not recover his civic rights by the fiction of postliminium, as a man who had escaped from the enemy could. (Cicero, _De Oratore_, 40.) But the subtlety of the Romans found a solution of the difficulty in the case of Mancinus: there can be no surrender, if there is nobody to receive the surrender; therefore Mancinus was not surrendered; therefore he was capable of recovering his civil rights. (Cicero, _Topica_ 1.)
[43] The war of Numantia was prolonged to their disgrace, as the Romans considered it, and they at last elected Scipio consul B.C. 134, and sent him to Spain. He took Numantia after a siege of fifteen months, and totally destroyed it, B.C. 133, the same year in which his brother-in-law Tiberius Gracchus lost his life. (Velleius Paterc. ii.
4.) Caius Gracchus, the brother of Tiberius, served under Scipio at Numantia, and also Jugurtha, afterwards king of the Numidians, and Caius Marius, the conqueror of Jugurtha.
[44] Plutarch's account of the Roman public land is brief and not satisfactory. A clearer statement, which differs from Plutarch's in some respects, is given by Appian. (_Civil Wars_, i. 7, &c.) The Roman territory (Romanus Ager) was originally confined to a small circuit, as we see from the history of the early wars of Rome. Even Aricia (La Riccia) about fifteen miles south-east of Rome, was a city of the Latin confederation in the reign of Tarquinius Superbus. (Liv. 1, c. 50.) The Romans extended their territory by conquest, and they thus acquired large tracts of land in Italy, which were made the property of the state under the name of Ager Publicus. This public land was enjoyed originally by the patricians, and perhaps by them only, on payment of a certain rent to the treasury (Ærarium). The rents of the public land were a large part of the public income, and intended to defray a portion of the public expenditure. The plebs soon began to lay claim to a share in these lands, and a division of some tracts was made among the plebeians in the reign of Servius Tullius. The lands divided among the plebeians were given to them in ownership. The tracts of public land which were enjoyed by the patricians on the terms above mentioned, were considered, as they, in fact, were, public property; and the interest of the patricians in such lands was called a possession (possessio). Those who enjoyed the public land as a possessio were said to possess it (possidere), and they were called possessores, a term which often occurs in the first six books of Livius, and which Plutarch has attempted to translate by a Greek word ([Greek: ktêmatikoi]). It is likely enough that the patricians abused their right to the use of the land by not always paying the rent; as we may collect from the passages in Dionysius extensive tracts also prevented the public land from being distributed among the plebeians to the extent that they wished. The disputes between the two orders in the state, the aristocracy or nobles and the plebeians, or, as Livius generally calls them, the patres and the plebs; (the padri and the plebe of Machiavelli, _Discorsi_, &c.), about the public land, commenced with the agitation of Spurius Cassius, B.C. 486, the history of which is given by Livius in his Second Book (c. 41). The contest was continued at intervals to B.C. 366, when a law was passed which is commonly called one of the Licinian Rogations, which forbade any man to have a possession in the public lands to the amount of more than 500 jugera. This is the law to which Plutarch alludes.
The extent and difficulty of the subject of the public land makes it impossible to examine it fully in a note. I propose to treat of it at length in an appendix in a future volume.
[45] The words in Plutarch literally signify "barbarian prisons," but I have used the word ergastula, which was the Roman name, though it is a word of Greek origin, and signifies "working-places." The ergastula were places generally under ground and lighted from above: they were used both as places to work in and as lodging-places for slaves who cultivated the fields in chains. (Plinius, _N.H._ 18, c. 3; Florus, iii.
19.) They were also places of punishment for refractory slaves. The object of these places of confinement was also to prevent slaves from running away, and rising in insurrection. The slaves were placed at night in separate cells to prevent all communication between them. When the slaves broke out in rebellion in Sicily under Eunus, who is mentioned by Plutarch (Sulla, c. 36), the ergastula were broken open, and a servile army of above sixty thousand men was raised. The Roman master had full power over his slave, who was merely viewed as an animal; and these ergastula, being in the country and out of sight, would give a cruel master full opportunity of exercising his tyranny.
They were abolished by the Emperor Hadrian (Spartianus, _Hadrianus_, 18).
[46] C. Lælius, the father, was an intimate friend of Scipio Africanus the Elder. C. Lælius, the son, the Wise or the Prudent, was also an intimate friend of the younger Africanus. Cicero's treatise on Friendship is entitled Lælius in honour of Lælius the Prudent.
[47] Tiberius Gracchus was elected Tribune B.C. 133, and he lost his life the same year.
[48] Cicero (_Brutus_, c. 27) calls the Greek Diophanes a teacher of Tiberius Gracchus. Blossius is mentioned by Cicero (_Lælius_, c. 11) as one of those who urged Tiberius to his measures of reform. Antipater of Tarsus was a Stoic. The two sons of Cornelia had a learned education and were acquainted with the language and philosophy of the Greeks, and it is probable that the moral and political speculations with which they thus became familiar, and their associating with Greeks, had considerable influence on their political opinions. Tiberius Gracchus the father was also well enough acquainted with Greek to speak the language. His oration to the Rhodians was spoken in Greek.
[49] It does not seem certain what Postumius is intended. Sp. Postumius Albinus Magnus was consul B.C. 148, and is supposed by Meyer (_Orat. Rom.
Fragmenta_, 197) to be the orator alluded to by Cicero (_Brutus_, 25).
But this Postumius was too old to be a rival of Gracchus. Another of the same name was consul B.C. 110, and conducted the war against Jugurtha unsuccessfully; but he was perhaps too young to be a rival of Gracchus.
[50] This was P. Licinius Crassus Mucianus Dives, the son of P. Mucius Scævola, and the adopted son of P. Licinius Crassus Dives, as appears from Cicero (_Academ._ 2, c. 5), who mentions him with his brother P.
Scævola as one of the advisers of Tiberius Gracchus in his legislation.
Crassus was consul with L. Valerius Flaccus B.C. 131. He was a soldier, a lawyer, and an orator. He lost his life in the war against Aristonikus in the Roman province of Asia B.C. 131. It is remarked that he was the first pontifex maximus who went beyond the limits of Italy, for he was consul and pontifex maximus when he went to carry on the war against Aristonikus. (Livius, _Epitome_, 59.) The pontifex maximus, as the head of religion, had important duties which required his presence at Rome.
[51] The illustrious family of the Scævolæ produced many orators and jurists. This Scævola was P. Mucius Scævola, the brother of P. Licinius Crassus Mucianus. He was consul B.C. 133, the year in which Tiberius Gracchus attempted his reform. He attained the dignity of pontifex maximus in B.C. 131 on his brother's death. Scævola was probably a timid man. Cicero states that his brother openly favoured the measures of Tiberius; and Scævola was suspected of doing so. After the death of Tiberius he approved of the conduct of Scipio Nasica, who was the active mover in this affair, and assisted in drawing up several decrees of the Senate in justification of the measure and even in commendation of it.
but his chief merit was as a jurist. He was the father of a son still more distinguished as a jurist, Quintus Mucius Scævola, who also became pontifex maximus, and was one of the teachers of Cicero. He is considered to be one of those who laid the foundations of Roman law and formed it into a science (_Dig._ 1, tit. 2, s. 2). Quintus Mucius Scævola, commonly called the augur, also a distinguished jurist, was a cousin of P. Mucius Scævola, the pontifex, and a teacher of Cicero before Cicero became a hearer of the pontifex.
[52] The eloquence of Tiberius Gracchus is commemorated by Cicero (_Brutus_, c. 27), who had read his orations. He describes them as not sufficiently ornate in expression, but as acute and full of judgment.
The specimens of the orations of Tiberius (c. 9. 15) and those in Appian (_Civil Wars_, 9. 15) fully bear out the opinion of Cicero as to his acuteness. Some German writers assert that these speeches in Plutarch are either fabricated by him or taken from other writers; but assertions like these, which are not founded on evidence, are good for nothing.
Plutarch gives the speeches as genuine: at least he believes them to be so, and therefore he did not fabricate them. And it is not likely that any body else did. These two fragments (c. 9. 15) bear no resemblance to the style of most writers who have fabricated speeches. They are in a genuine Roman style. If any man could fabricate them, it was Livius, and Plutarch may have taken them from him.
[53] The same expression occurs in Horace (1 _Carm._ 1), which there also applies to the Romans, and not to the gods, as some suppose.
[54] Marcus Octavius, who was one of the tribuni plebis B.C. 133, was a descendant of Cneius Octavius, quæstor B.C. 230. Caius Octavius, better known as Caius Julius Cæsar Octavianus and as the Emperor Augustus, was a descendant of Caius the second son of Cneius. Cicero, whose opinion about the Gracchi changed with the changed circumstances of his own life, commends the opposition of Marcus Octavius to the measures of Gracchus. (_Brutus_, c. 25.) He also says that Octavius was a good speaker.
The institution of the tribuni plebis is one of the most important events in the history of Rome, and the struggle between the plebeians headed by their tribunes, and the nobility, is the development of the constitutional history of Rome. Though there were tribunes in the kingly period, the establishment of the tribuni plebis as the guardians of the plebs is properly referred to the year B.C. 494, when the plebs seceded to the Mons Sacer or the Sacred Mount. On this occasion the patricians consented to the election of two tribunes from the plebs. (Livius, 2, c.
33: compare Livius, 2, 56. 58.) The number was afterwards increased to ten, and this number continued unaltered. Only a plebeian could be elected tribune. The persons of the tribunes were declared to be sacred (sacrosancti). Their powers were originally limited, as above stated, to the protection of the rights of the plebs and of the individuals of the plebeian body against the oppression of the patrician magistrates. It is not possible within the compass of a note to trace the history of the gradual increase of the tribunitian power (tribunitia potestas): such a subject is a large chapter in the history of Rome. Incidental notices often appear in Plutarch's Lives, which will help a reader to form a general notion of the nature of the magistracy, and the effect which it had on the development of the Roman constitution. The article Tribuni in Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities gives an outline of the functions of the tribuni plebis.
Very soon after the institution of the tribunate, the nobles learned the art of destroying the power of the college of tribunes by gaining over one or more of the members; for, as Plutarch states, the opposition (intercessio) of a single tribune rendered the rest of his colleagues powerless.
[55] 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 ([Greek: aristoi]), 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 [Greek: dynatoi], the powerful. In other places he calls them the rich ([Greek: plousioi]), the possessors [of public land] ([Greek: ktêmatikoi]), the aristocratical body ([Greek: aristokratikoi]); and perhaps other terms.
He calls the plebs, or people as opposed to this class, by various names, of which [Greek: dêmos] is the most common: he also calls them the multitude ([Greek: plêthos]), the many ([Greek: hoi polloi]), 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.
[56] Plutarch, who is fond of allusions to the Greek poets, here alludes to a passage in the Bacchæ of Euripides, l. 387: "for e'en in Bacchus' orgies She who is chaste will never be corrupted."
See Bacchæ, ed. Elmsley, l. 317, 834, and the notes.
[57] The temple of Saturn was now used, among other purposes, as the treasury of the state, the Ærarium.
[58] A dolo is described by Hesychius, v. [Greek: Dolônes], in one sense, as a dagger contained in a wooden case, a kind of sword-stick.
(See Facciolati, _Lexicon_.) Kaltwasser describes it as a walking-stick containing a dagger, and translates the passage, "he provided himself with a robbers' dagger, without making any secret of it." I think that he wore it concealed, but made no secret of it, which agrees better with the whole context; and Amyot has translated it so.
[59] The word in Plutarch is water jars, _hydriai_ ([Greek: hydriai]), the Roman sitellæ, urnæ or orcæ. The sitellæ were a kind of jar with a narrow neck: they were filled with water so that the wooden lots (sortes) would float at the top, and only one could be there at a time.
These lots were used for the purpose of determining in what order the tribes or centuries should vote, for the names of the several tribes or centuries were on the several lots. The vessel into which the voters put their votes (tabellæ), when the order of voting had been fixed for the tribes and centuries, was called cista; and it was a basket of wicker-work or something of the kind, of a cylindrical shape. If Plutarch has used the proper word here, the preliminary proceedings were disturbed by the rich seizing or throwing down the vessels, out of which were to be drawn the lots for determining in what order the tribes should vote. The business had not yet got so far as the voting, which consisted in the voters depositing in a cista one of the tablets (tabellæ), which were distributed among them for this purpose, and which were marked with an appropriate letter to express acceptance of a measure or rejection of it. There is a Roman denarius which represents a man going to put a tabella into a cista: the tabella is marked A, which means Absolvo, I acquit. The letter C (Condemno, I condemn) was marked on the tabella of condemnation. (Eckhel, _Doctr. Num. Vet._ V. 166.) The coin was struck to commemorate the carrying of a law by L. Cassius Longinus B.C. 137, by which the voting in criminal trials (judicia populi) except for perduellio (treason) should be by ballot and not as before by word of mouth.
These remarks are taken from an essay by Wunder (_Variæ Lectiones &c. ex Codice Erfurtensi_), in which he has established the meaning of sitella and cista respectively to be that which Manutius long ago maintained. He observes that in the Roman comitia one sitella would be sufficient, as it was only used for receiving the names of the tribes or centuries, which were put in for the purpose of determining by drawing them out, in what order the tribes or centuries should vote. And accordingly he says that when comitia are spoken of, we never find urns or sitellæ spoken of in the plural number. But he has not mentioned the passage of Plutarch.
It may be difficult to determine if Plutarch considered that the preliminary lot-drawing had been gone through, and the people were voting. If he considered the voting to be going on, he has used the wrong word. With this explanation, I leave the word "voting-urns" in the text, which is not the correct Roman word but may be what Plutarch meant. It seems as if he thought that the voting had commenced.
[60] Plutarch writes it Mallius, for the Greeks never place _n_ before _l_.
[61] From this it appears that the vote of each tribe counted as one, and the vote of the tribe was determined by the majority of voters in each tribe. It seems to follow that each tribe had a cista to receive its votes. It is said, the practice was to count the votes when all was over; but they must have been counted as each tribe voted, according to this story. The narrative of Appian is the same (_Civil Wars_, i. 12).
[62] The names of various Roman officers and functionaries were derived from their number, as duumviri (two men), triumviri (three men), decemviri, and so on. Some description was added to the name to denote their functions. There were triumviri agro dando or dividendo, triumviri for the division of public land; duumviri juri dicundo, for administering justice, and so forth.
[63] Appian (_Civil Wars_, i. 13) calls him Quintus Mummius.
[64] Plutarch and other Greek writers translate the Roman word, cliens, by Pélates ([Greek: pelatês]). (See Marius, c. 5, notes.)
[65] Plutarch generally uses Attic coins. Nine oboli were a drachma and a half, or about six sestertii. (See c. 2, note.)
[66] See c. 21.
[67] This Attalus III., the last king of Pergamum, left his kingdom to the Romans on his death B.C. 133, the year of the tribunate of Gracchus.
His kingdom comprised the best part of that tract out of which the Romans formed the province of Asia. Pergamum was the name of the capital. This rich bequest was disputed by Aristonikus. (See c. 20.)
[68] Perhaps Q. Pompeius Rufus who was consul B.C. 141, and disgraced himself by a treaty with the Numantines and his subsequent behaviour about it. (Cicero, _De Officiis_, iii. 30; _De Finibus_, ii. 17; Appian, _Iberica_, c. 79.)
[69] Quintus Cæcilius Metellus Macedonicus, who was consul B.C. 143.
Kaltwasser says, that Plutarch without doubt means Balearicus, the son of Metellus Macedonicus, which son was consul B.C. 123. Without doubt he means the father, who is mentioned by Cicero as an opponent of Tiberius Gracchus, and he states that an oration of his against Gracchus was preserved in the Annals of Fannius. (_Brutus_, 21.)
[70] Titus Annius Luscus was consul with Q. Fulvius Nobilior B.C. 153.
[71] It is clear that Plutarch believed this to be a genuine speech of Tiberius. It is not an argument that he could have made, nor is it likely that it is a fabrication of any professed speech-writer. It is true that there were many speeches extant among the Romans, which, though mere rhetorical essays, were attributed to persons of note and passed off as genuine speeches. But this is either not one of them, or it has been managed with consummate art. The defence of Tiberius is a blot on his character. He could not avoid knowing that his arguments were unsound. To abdicate, which means to resign a Roman magistracy, was a different thing from being deprived of it. The Tribunes were elected at the Comitia Tributa, but they derived their powers by uninterrupted succession from the consecrated act (Lex Sacrata) done on the Holy Mount and confirmed after the overthrow of the Decemviral power. (Livius, 2, c. 33; 3, c. 55.) On this subject, see Bubino, _Untersuchungen über Röm.
Verfassung_, p. 32.
[72] See Caius Gracchus, c. 5. Appian does not mention these measures of Tiberius.
[73] The elections of Tribunes in the time of Cicero were on the 17th of July (_Ad Attic._ i. 1). According to Dionysius the first Tribunes entered on their office on the 10th of December. Kaltwasser suggests that as it was now the summer season, the country people were busy in their fields and could not come to the election, which thus would be in