confiscatory. He appealed to the people, telling them, “You fight and die to
give wealth and luxury to others; you are called the masters of the world,
but there is not a foot of ground that you can call your own.”
Contrary
to Roman law, he campaigned for re-election as tribune; in an election-day
riot he was slain (133 B.C.). His brother Caius, taking up his cause, failed
to prevent a renewal of violence, and ordered his servant to kill him; the
slave obeyed, and then killed himself (121 B.C.); three thousand of Caius’
followers were put to death by Senatorial decree. Marius became the leader
of the plebs, but withdrew when the movement verged on revolution.
Catiline [Catiline (Lucius Sergius Catilina; 108?- 62 B.C.)], proposing to
abolish all debts, organized a revolutionary army of “wretched paupers”; he
was inundated by Cicero’s [Cicero, Marcus Tullius (106-43 B.C.)] angry
eloquence, and died in battle against the state (62 B.C.). Julius Caesar
attempted a compromise, but was cut down by the patricians (44 B.C.) after
five years of civil war. Mark Antony [Antony, Mark (83-30 B.C.)] confused
his support of Caesar’s policies with personal ambitions and romance;
Octavius defeated him at Actium, and established the “Principate” that for
210 years (30 B.C. – A.D. 180) maintained the Pax Romana between the
classes as well as among the states within the Imperial frontiers.
After the breakdown of political order in the Western Roman Empire
(A.D. 476), centuries of destitution were followed by the slow renewal and
reconcentration of wealth, partly in the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. In
one aspect the Reformation was a redistribution of this wealth by the
reduction of German and English payments to the Roman Church, and by
the secular appropriation of ecclesiastical property and revenues. The
French Revolution attempted a violent redistribution of wealth by
Jacqueries in the countryside and massacres in the cities, but the chief
result was a transfer of property and privilege from the aristocracy to the
bourgeoisie. The government of the United States, in 1933-52 and 1960-65,
followed Solon’s peaceful methods, and accomplished a moderate and
pacifying redistribution; perhaps someone had studied history. The upper
