working in their fields and their vineyards.”  Tiberius Gracchus, a tribune of the plebs, exclaimed in a moment of indignation, “The wild beasts of Italy have at least their lairs, but the men who offer their blood for Italy have only the light and the air that they breathe; they wander about without shelter, without a dwelling, with their wives and their children.  Those generals do but mock them who exhort them to fight for their tombs and their temples.  Is there one of them who still possesses the sacred altar of his house and the tomb of his ancestors?  They are called the masters of the world while they have not for themselves a single foot of earth.”

=The City Plebs.=—­While the farms were being drained, the city of Rome was being filled with a new population.  They were the descendants of the ruined peasants whom misery had driven to the city; besides these, there were the freedmen and their children.  They came from all the corners of the world—­Greeks, Syrians, Egyptians, Asiatics, Africans, Spaniards, Gauls—­torn from their homes, and sold as slaves; later freed by their masters and made citizens, they massed themselves in the city.  It was an entirely new people that bore the name Roman.  One day Scipio, the conqueror of Carthage and of Numantia, haranguing the people in the forum, was interrupted by the cries of the mob.  “Silence! false sons of Italy,” he cried; “do as you like; those whom I brought to Rome in chains will never frighten me even if they are no longer slaves.”  The populace preserved quiet, but these “false sons of Italy,” the sons of the vanquished, had already taken the place of the old Romans.

This new plebeian order could not make a livelihood for itself, and so the state had to provide food for it.  A beginning was made in 123 with furnishing corn at half price to all citizens, and this grain was imported from Sicily and Africa.  Since the year 63[140] corn was distributed gratuitously and oil was also provided.  There were registers and an administration expressly for these distributions, a special service for furnishing provisions (the Annona).  In 46 Caesar found 320,000 citizens enrolled for these distributions.

=Electoral Corruption.=—­This miserable and lazy populace filled the forum on election days and made the laws and the magistrates.  The candidates sought to win its favors by giving shows and public feasts, and by dispensing provisions.  They even bought votes.  This sale took place on a large scale and in broad day; money was given to distributers who divided it among the voters.  Once the Senate endeavored to stop this trade; but when Piso, the consul, proposed a law to prohibit the sale of suffrages, the distributers excited a riot and drove the consul from the forum.  In the time of Cicero no magistrate could be elected without enormous expenditures.

=Corruption of the Senate.=—­Poverty corrupted the populace who formed the assemblies; luxury tainted the men of the old families who composed the Senate.  The nobles regarded the state as their property and so divided among themselves the functions of the state and intrigued to exclude the rest of the citizens from them.  When Cicero was elected magistrate, he was for thirty years the first “new man” to enter the succession of offices.