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[Mr. BYRD.] I thank the chair. Mr. President, am I to be recognized for one hour?
[The CHAIR.] The Senator is correct.
[Mr. BYRD.] Mr. President, this is the ninth in my series of weekly 1-hour speeches on
the line-item veto.
In my speech of the week preceding the July 4 holiday, I noted the remarkable economic
and social changes that had occurred in Rome and throughout Italy during the period of
Rome's phenomenal territorial expansion in the third and second centuries B.C.
I noted that there had been an emergence of two political factions: the Optimates, who
represented the senatorial oligarchy and other aristocrats, and the Populares, or the people's
party, who represented the proletariat and those elements that were discontented with
the existing social order and who demanded certain reforms.
I also observed the growing rivalry between the Senate and the equestrian order. The roots
of the equestrian order went back to the days of early Rome, to the equites who composed
the cavalry of the Roman armies.
We also noted the rapid growth in the latifundia, the large plantation-type farms that spread
throughout Italy and that resulted from the diminishing number of small family farms,
from which had come the stalwart citizen soldiery during the centuries of the regal period and
the early and middle Republics.
We noted also the growing slave economy and the serious problems of unemployment in the
cities, and the serious problem, of course, that resulted from the spread of the latifundia
and the diminishing number of small family farms, the serious vanishing peasantry from
the land.
Tiberius Gracchus who was a tribune in 133 B.C. had been traveling through Etruria when
he noticed the dearth of inhabitants. And he noted that the soil was tilled and the
flocks were tended by slaves. And he wondered how the great Roman Republic could continue
to be independent and continue in its leadership if the vanishing peasantry were supplanted
by slaves from foreign countries. In those days, in order to be a soldier one was required
to have property.
This matter concerned Tiberius and he felt, in view of the vanishing peasantry from the
land, that the armies of Rome would suffer, and it constituted a menace to the Republic.
I am reminded that Tiberius' concerns were echoed by Oliver Goldsmith in `The Deserted
Village' who picked up the theme that had so disturbed Tiberius Gracchus.
Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay;
Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade;
A breath can make them, as a breath has made;
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride,
When once destroyed, can never be supplied.
So, we see in this, another parallel between the history of the Romans and the history
of our own country as we have experienced the shift away from the small family farms
to the large corporate farms, and the movement away from what was once a predominantly rural
population in this country to the huge sprawling urban communities with their problems of poverty,
disease, unemployment, crime, declining family values, and declining religious values.
It was to these problems, therefore, that Tiberius Gracchus in 133 B.C. sought to address
his legislation which was very much opposed by the Senate oligarchy. And he paid with
his life for his efforts. It cost him his life at the hands of a mob made up of slaves
and clients of Senators and other aristocrats.
I have mentioned the word `client' heretofore during this series of speeches, and I should
digress momentarily to explain the meaning of the term when used in this context.
In early Rome, it was customary for poorer citizens to attach themselves to a rich or
influential citizen in return for his financial assistance or legal assistance, and he thus
became their patron. They--the poorer citizens who had attached themselves to the more influential
citizen--became his clients. And in return for his financial assistance and other types
of aid, they gave to him their political support, and their help in his private life. And it
was a matter of great prestige for the patron to appear in public surrounded by a large
delegation of these respectful clients. They not only owed him their political support
and private help, but they also owed him their respect, and they showed this by greeting
him in the morning and by accompanying him out into the city which, as I say, was a matter
of great prestige for him.
Also, in those early times when enemy peoples were conquered or when an enemy city was captured
and destroyed, the conquered peoples were sold as slaves. It was the right of any owner
of a slave to manumit that slave whenever and however he pleased, and when the owner
manumitted a slave, the freedman then became his client and the former owner became the
patron.
The law recognized this relationship and it had legal sanction. The patron and his client
were not allowed to give testimony against one another.
In 124 B.C., Gaius Gracchus, the younger brother of Tiberius, was elected tribune--following
the death of his brother by a decade. In 123 B.C., Gaius was reelected tribune, contrary
to the established practice which precluded one's election to the same office unless 10
years had passed.
Gaius carried forward the agrarian policies of his dead brother, and his aims went even
further. Several of his laws were clearly designed to strengthen the equestrians and
to weaken the Senate as, for example, his law changing the composition of juries to
exclude Senators from sitting on juries and to allow the replacement of the Senators as
jurors by the equestrians. That he fully recognized the significance and the implications of this
law was shown by his remark to someone that even if he should die, he would leave it--meaning
the law--as a sword thrust into the side of the Senate.
Gaius also sought to reestablish an Italian peasantry on the land--as his brother had
before him--as a means of bringing new strength to the Roman armies, while at the same time
ridding the cities of vital hands.
Gaius was not successful in his effort to be elected tribune for a third time. When
he was no longer tribune, the consul, Lucius Opimius, summoned Gaius to appear before the
Senate to answer questions concerning the actions that he, Gaius, had taken during his
two terms as tribune. Paterculus, the historian, who lived between the years 19 B.C. and 30
A.D., writes that Gaius was determined not to be arrested, not to appear before the Roman
Senate, and that, in his flight, at the point of time in which he was about to be apprehended
by the emissaries of Opimius, he offered his neck to the sword of his friendly slave, Euporus.
The body of Gaius, like the body of Tiberius before him, was unceremoniously cast into
the Tiber, that he would not enjoy the quiet repose of the grave. Many of his followers
were executed.
The Senate had suffered a great loss to its prestige and its authority, and even though
the Gracchan threat had been eliminated, the Senate owed its victory to violence. This
afforded a precedent which might be turned against the Senate itself. Moreover, the alliance
of the Equestrians and the urban proletariat had proved to be stronger than the Senate,
and this, too, was a lesson that was not lost on future leaders ambitious for power.
While at Rome the interest had been centered upon the struggle between the Gracchans and
the Senate, Roman armies had been
busy fighting wars in the defense of Roman territory, as a result of which, in 121 B.C.,
the Romans became masters of southern Gaul, from the Alps to the Pyrenees. In 112 B.C., Rome became
involved in a serious conflict in North Africa, in Numidia.
Her involvement revealed to the world the corruption of the ruling class in Rome, and
it rekindled the smoldering fires of internal political strife. The occasion was the death,
in 118 B.C., of Micipsa, successor to Masinissa, King of Numidia, loyal ally of Rome. Micipsa
had bequeathed his kingdom to his two sons, Adherbal and Hiempsal, and to a nephew, Jugurtha,
whom he had adopted several years before. Jugurtha was able and energetic, but also
ambitious and unscrupulous. While preparations were being made for the division of the kingdom
among the three heirs, Jugurtha had Hiempsal assassinated and expelled Adherbal, who fled
to Rome and appealed for aid.
It is difficult to understand the motivations of the Roman Senate in the imbroglio that
followed. Rome had no obligation to interfere in the internal affairs of the Numidians,
but so successful and influential were Jugurtha's agents that a commission, sent Numidia in
116 B.C. to partition the country between the rivals, gave to Jugurtha the western and
richer half of the kingdom, leaving the eastern and poorer part to Adherbal.
Jugurtha, however, had no intention of ruling only half of the country. His aim was to be
the ruler of all of Numidia.
And so he provoked Adherbal to war, and he blockaded Adherbal in his capital city of
Cirta, which was aided in its defense by the local Italian business community. Adherbal
again appealed to Rome, and the Roman Senate sent out commissions to investigate. But they
succumbed to Jugurtha's diplomacy,
and the decision was made to force the city to surrender. Adherbal and the city's defenders
were executed, many of whom were Italians. This created a storm in Rome and war was declared.
The Roman consul, Lucius Calpurnius Bestia, invaded Numidia, but Jugurtha resorted to bribes and secured
easy terms for peace that aroused such suspicions among the Equestrians in Rome that the opponents
of the Senate forced an investigation. Jugurtha was summoned to appear before the Senate to
answer questions as to his relations with Roman officials in Numidia.
Arriving in Rome, Jugurtha immediately bought the intervention of two Roman tribunes, who
voted against the taking of any testimony from him. Confident that he could purchase
immunity for any action, he secured the assassination, in Rome itself, of a rival claimant to the
Numidian throne. His friends in the Senate dared protect him no longer, and he was ordered
to leave Italy.
The war was reopened, and a battle was fought in which the Roman army was defeated and forced
to pass under the yoke, a matter of great humiliation, and released only after its commander
had conceded to an alliance between Jugurtha and Rome. Treachery and bribery had played
a part in this shameful episode. The terms were rejected by the Roman Senate, and a new
consul, Quintus Caecilius Metellus, surnamed Numidicus, took command. One of his staff
officers was a man named Gaius Marius. Gaius Marius was an ambitious and able officer,
and he implored Metellus that he, Marius, be allowed to go to Rome and stand for the
office of consul. Metellus' reaction was one that insulted Marius, and so from that time
on he had a bitter feeling toward Metellus and intrigued against him. Finally, Metellus
agreed to let Marius go to Rome to stand for consul.
In 107 B.C. Metellus was elected consul and the Populares secured the passage of a law
by the Tribal Assembly transferring the command in Numidia from Metellus to Marius. Take note.
The Senate yielded in this encroachment by the Populares on its traditional rights. Marius pursued the battle in North Africa
with energy, enthusiasm, and effectiveness. His quaestor, or quartermaster, was Lucius
Cornelius Sulla, who was destined, in due time, to become a bitter rival.
Marius pressed the war with great vigor and won hard-fought victories over Jugurtha and
his father-in-law Bocchus, king of Mauretania.
Sulla, in due time, was successful in capturing Jugurtha, at great risk to his own life. He
captured Jugurtha through the treachery of Bocchus, whose betrayal of his son-in-law
brought an end to the war. Jugurtha was taken to Rome where he was executed after gracing
the triumph of Marius in 105 B.C.
The repercussions of the Jugurthan war were significant. The prestige of the Roman Senate,
having already suffered from the Gracchan assaults, was weakened still further by the
apparent corruptibility and venality of Senators in dealing with Jugurtha, and by the Populares
and the equestrians, who had intervened in foreign policy in the transfer of the command
in Numidia from Metellus to Marius. Once again, the equestrians and the city proletariat had
shown that they were stronger than the Senate and that they could control public policy.
The Jugurthan war had also produced a military leader in the person of Marius, behind whom
these elements could unite.
Marius was again elected consul in 104 B.C., the Roman people disregarding the required
legal interval of 10 years, and he was given the command against the northern barbarians
in Gaul. He set to work immediately in reorganizing and strengthening the Roman army.
Not only did he bring about improvements--may I say to my good friend, the senior Senator
from Alaska, who serves on the Defense Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations and is
a very able member of that subcommittee and full committee and is tremendously interested
in military affairs--not only did Marius bring about improvements in legionary tactics, equipment,
weapons, and organization, but he also accepted as recruits citizens, whose lack of property
had previously disqualified them from service in the legions. He accepted men who had no
property at all. This was a great and far-reaching change that Marius brought about. He thus
transformed military service from an obligation to the Roman state into a career which could
employ thousands of landless and unemployed Romans.
Marius' innovation thus made possible the creation of large standing armies for the
first time--the creation of large standing armies in Roman provinces such as Spain, Asia,
and Africa. Loyalty to the Roman State came to be supplanted by loyalty to a successful
general,
who could rely on his soldiers to support him against civil authority and on the support
of his veterans to back him in subsequent political campaigns.
Marius was reelected consul for the years 103 and 102 and 101, since the threat from
the northern barbarians continued. In his fifth term as consul, in 101 B.C., Marius
was victorious over the Cimbri and the Teutones, and Rome was thereby saved from a repetition
of the Gallic invasion of the fourth century B.C.
A coalition among three men--Lucius Appuleius Saturninus and Gaius Servilius Glaucia and
Marius--resulted in a sixth term as consul for Marius, in the year 100 B.C.
That was the year in which Julius Caesar was born, and Julius Caesar was a nephew of Marius
by marriage.
It also resulted in reelection to the office of Tribune for a second term for Saturninus,
and a praetorship for Glaucia. Glaucia and Saturninus became candidates for the following
year 99 B.C., but Glaucia had a rival candidate murdered, which provoked violent disorders.
The Senate adopted a decree calling on Marius to restore order. Marius forced the surrender
of Glaucia and Saturninus and placed them in a building for safe keeping, but their
enemies tore off the roof of the building and *** them to death.
Marius suffered a political eclipse and went into seclusion for several years. The Senate
was once more triumphant and the Populares were discredited.
The Optimates celebrated their triumph by seeking to place a check on demagogic legislation
through the passage of a law
that declared the inclusion
of unrelated or extraneous topics in any single legislative enactment illegal, and requiring
the customary interval of 3 market days between the formal publication of an impending measure
and the actual voting on it to be strictly observed.
So here--I see my friend from Mississippi smiling; I see a smile on my friend's face
from Alaska. They know what I am about to say--here was a type of Byrd Rule 2,092 years
ago, dealing with unrelated and extraneous matter.
Perhaps an awareness of these rules of parliamentary procedure in ancient Rome will help the Members
of the United States Senate and House of Representatives to better appreciate and understand the importance
and significance of our own rules.
In 91 B.C.,
the Roman Tribune, Livius Drusus, promised non-Roman Italians that he would bring forth
legislation to give them Roman citizenship. The Senate and the Equestrians were very much
opposed to this, and Drusus, learning of a plot against his life, removed himself to
the atrium of his House, where he transacted the public's business. It was poorly lighted,
and one evening, when he was sending a crowd away, he suddenly exclaimed that he was wounded,
and fell down while uttering the words. A shoemaker's knife was found thrust into his
back.
When the Italians heard of the *** of Drusus, they considered it no longer tolerable for
those who were laboring for their political advancement to suffer such outrages and, as
they saw no other means of acquiring citizenship, they decided to revolt against the Romans
altogether and to make war against them.
They, therefore, sent envoys secretly to one another, formed a league, and exchanged hostages
as a pledge of good faith. They also sent ambassadors to Rome to complain that, although
they had helped Rome to fight its wars of conquest, the Romans had not been willing
to admit the Italians to citizenship. The Roman Senate sternly rejected their pleas.
Appianus, or Appian, states in his history of the civil wars, that when the revolt broke
out, all the neighboring peoples declared war at the same time. Thus, in the year 90
B.C., the Social War began. It is sometimes referred to as the Marsic War, sometimes as
the Italic War, and sometimes as the War Against the Allies.
The non-Roman Italians had forces amounting to about 100,000 foot soldiers and horsemen,
besides the soldiers that remained as guards in each town.
The Romans sent an equal force against them, composed of the Roman legions and the Italian
peoples who were still in alliance with them. The Romans were led by the two consuls, Sextus
Julius Caesar and Publius Rutilius Lupus. Serving with them as lieutenant generals were
such renowned men as Gaius Marius, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, Gaius Perpenna, Publius Licinius
Crassus, Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo, the father of Pompey and under whom both Pompey and Cicero
served during the Social War.
The non-Roman armies had several very able generals, as well, to lead their united forces.
The consul Rutilius Lupus lost his life in the war, as did tens of thousands of others
on both sides. The body of Rutilius, along with the bodies of many others, was brought
to Rome for burial. Their corpses made a piteous spectacle. The Roman Senate decreed that from
that time, those who were killed in the war should be buried where they fell, lest the
spectacle deter others from entering the army.
Another counsel subsequently was killed, Cato Porcius. The Romans decided to bring an end to this
terrible war, which was costing them so heavily in treasure and in blood. So they conceded
the issue at stake. All Italy was now united, and all of the peoples south of the Po river
received Roman citizenship. By promising Roman citizenship to all those who had not yet revolted
or who would lay down their arms, the Roman Senate belatedly acknowledged the folly of
its policy opposing Drusus.
The revolt had brought Marius out of exile. The Senate had already appointed Lucius Cornelius
Sulla to the command in Asia Minor
against the able and ambitious King of Pontus, Mithradates VI, Eupator. However, with the
aid of a demagogic tribune, Publius Sulpicius Rufus, the command in Asia Minor was transferred
by law to Marius, whereupon Sulla marched his army back to Rome.
Marius and Rufus hastily collected troops to fight a pitched battle of Romans against
Romans in and around the city itself.
Appian writes, `Now for the first time, an army of her own citizens invaded Rome as a
hostile country. From this time,
all civil dissensions were decided only by the arbitrament of arms.'
Sulla was victorious. Marius barely escaped with his life to Mauretania. Sulpicius was killed and his head severed from his body and nailed
to the Rostra in the Forum. We are told that Sulpicius had been betrayed by a slave, and that Sulla rewarded the slave for his
services by freeing him, and then had him executed for his treachery.
Sulla hastily tried to reorganize the Roman Government by strengthening the Roman Senate
and reviving the army assembly, the comitia centuriata, and by using it to replace the Tribal Assembly,
the comitia tributa.
Leaving two consuls,
Lucius Cornelius Cinna and Gnaeus Octavius, sworn to support the new constitution, Sulla
hurried off to fight Mithradates in Asia Minor. He had not been gone long before Cinna impeached
Sulla and proposed the recall of Marius. The Senate deposed Cinna. He was driven from the
city by the other consul, Gnaeus Octavius.
Cinna fled to raise an army, to return and besiege Rome. Marius also returned and the
two of them overcame all resistance, again capturing Rome with a Roman Army. With a cruelty beyond belief, they hunted
down their opponents. Octavius and leading Senators and Equites were brutally slain.
Appian writes, `They killed remorselessly. All the heads of Senators were exposed in
front of the rostrum. All the friends of Sulla were put to death. His home was razed to the ground, his property
confiscated, and himself voted a public enemy. A search was made for his wife and children,
but they escaped.'
Marius died early in 86 B.C.,
soon after beginning his 7th term as consul. Cinna was left to lord it over Rome, where
he was supreme as consul for that year and for the succeeding 2 years.
Meanwhile, in Asia Minor, Sulla was victorious. He had slain thousands and collected a vast
treasury. He now prepared to return with a well-equipped, seasoned army to exact the
terrible revenge which he had been planning in cold blood. Cinna was under no illusions as to the fate
that awaited him. He started with an army to sail to Macedonia to intercept Sulla. But
Cinna was assassinated by his own soldiers in a mutiny at Brundisium, and the fleet did not sail. The followers of Marius and Cinna, nevertheless,
would not yield in Italy without a struggle.
Sulla landed in Italy in 83 B.C., and, at the Colline Gate, destroyed an opposing army,
massacring to the man the Samnites who had joined it. With a ruthless barbarity, he pursued
all those whom he considered to be his enemies, putting up proscription lists of their names
and declaring rewards for those who murdered them or who informed against them.
Paterculus, the historian, says that Sulla `was the first to set the precedent for proscription.'
Plutarch says, `Husbands were dispatched in the bosoms of their wives and sons in those
of their mothers.'
The innocent rich were included in the proscription lists in order that their property might be
confiscated.
All of Italy was in terror of Sulla's name. After a while, the proscriptions ceased and
Sulla went about the business of reorganizing the government.
Sulla was named dictator in 82 B.C. He brought about the appointment of an interrex whom
he, Sulla, persuaded, under a special law for which the Senate had yielded to appoint
him, Sulla, as dictator for an indeterminate term. Under this special law, a dictator could
be appointed for an indeterminate term. This meant that Sulla had all the powers of consuls
and tribunes and censors, the combined powers of all the magistrates. Whereas the old practice
had
allowed the appointment of a dictator for a limited term of no more than 6 months, this
new law made possible an open-ended appointment. Sulla, by virtue of this unlimited term and
the scope of his powers, became the most powerful person in Roman history up to that time. He
had unprecedented autocratic authority.
Mr. President, Sulla was now the complete and absolute master of Italy.
He reshaped the Roman Government to suit his own conservative ideas. He made the Roman
Senate the most powerful body in the state, weakened the powers of the tribunes, subjected
all magistrates to strict accountability, and deprived the equestrians of the privilege,
that had been granted to them by Gaius Gracchus, of sitting as judges in their own cause.
Sulla also sought to improve the caliber of men sent to govern the republic's growing
empire. He tightened up the whole machinery of government, and settled thousands of his
veterans on land throughout Italy
that had been confiscated from the vast numbers who had perished or been proscribed in the
frightful slaughter he had let loose.
When Sulla voluntarily retired in the year 79 B.C., he depended upon his aristocratic
friends not to allow any infraction of the revised form of senatorial government that
he had created. He died the following year, 78 B.C., probably from colon cancer.
Mr. President, as we look back now, we see momentous changes that have taken place. Elderly
Romans who were boys in the days prior to Tiberius Gracchus had seen their world overturned.
Young Romans like Pompey and Cicero, who were 28, and Julius Caesar, who was 21, when Sulla
retired, had lived through unspeakable horrors that were utterly alien to the traditional, idealized notions that
they had held about their country.
The Roman Republic was still a Republic, but it was far different from the Republic that
had already been in existence 350 years when it attracted the admiration of the historian
Poloybius in the middle of the second century B.C.
The army
was no longer made up of the tough rural farmers, many of whom came from the most mountainous areas of the peninsula. Marius,
in creating a professional army, had created a new base of power for ambitious men to exploit
and use as an instrument of despotic authority.
And what of the Roman Senate? In the old heroic days, the Senate was the most powerful body in the
State. It held supreme power because of the respect given to its wise, courageous, and
incorruptible leadership.
But the power that Sulla conferred upon the Senate--he had increased the number of Senators
to 600 during his dictatorship--the power that Sulla conferred on Roman Senators made
them neither wise nor courageous. As to the incorruptibility of the Senate, which Cineas
in 280 B.C. had compared to an `assemblage of kings,' its sad decline was pregnant in
the prescient words uttered by Jugurtha 170 years later at the time he was ordered to leave Italy.
After passing through the gates of Rome, it is said that he looked back at the city several
times in silence. Suddenly he exclaimed, `Yonder is a city put up for sale, and its days are
numbered if it finds a buyer.'
Mr. President, the Republic's days were numbered.
I yield the floor.