The Historians' History of the World 05

Meanwhile the country party had succeeded in carrying the election of their present chief, Fulvius Flaccus, to the consulship for 125 B.C. He was a man with little force of oratory, but his activity and audacity gave him power, and his unchangeable attachment to the memory of Ti. Gracchus made him respectable. No sooner was he in the consul’s chair than he gave full proof of his headlong temerity by giving notice of a bill for extending the franchise to all the Latin and Italian allies. It was a reform bill sweeping beyond all example. No addition had been made to the Roman territory or the number of tribes since 241 B.C., a period of 116 years, and now at one stroke it was proposed to add to the register a population much more numerous than the whole existing number of Roman burgesses. The tribes felt their interests to be at stake, and the measure of Flaccus was highly unpopular at Rome.

At this moment, the senate adroitly contrived to detach Flaccus upon foreign service. The people of Massilia, old allies of Rome, sent to demand protection against the Salluvians, a Ligurian tribe of the Maritime Alps, and Flaccus was ordered to take command of the army destined to relieve them. He remained in Gaul for more than two years, and was honoured with a triumph in the year 123 B.C. Meantime his great measure for extending the franchise fell to the ground.

But the hopes excited by the impetuous consul were not easily relinquished. The excitement was great throughout Italy, and in one of the Latin colonies the smouldering fire burst into flame.

Fregellæ was a large and flourishing city on the Latin road. It was one of the eighteen colonies which had remained faithful to Rome in the Hannibalic War. It had seen the full franchise conferred on its neighbours at Formiæ, Fundi, and Arpinum at the close of that war. And now the cup was dashed from the very lip. Fregellæ flew to arms, without concert with any other towns; and L. Opimius, one of the prætors, a man of prompt resolution and devoid of pity, was ordered by the senate to crush the insurrection. The gates were opened to him by treachery. Opimius took his seat in the Forum, and exercised a fearful vengeance on the inhabitants, for which he was rewarded by the senate with a triumph. The walls were pulled down, and the colony, stripped of all its rights, was reduced to the condition of a mere market-town (conciliabulum). The example of Fregellæ for a time silenced the claims of the Italians.

Thus triumphant, the senate determined to keep the chiefs of the Gracchan party absent from Rome. Flaccus had not yet finished his Gallic wars; and an order was sent to detain C. Gracchus for a third year in Sardinia. But the young quæstor perceived the drift of this order, and returned to Rome about the middle of the year 124 B.C., to the no small consternation of the senate. He was instantly summoned before the censors then in office to account for his conduct, in order that he might be branded with a public stigma, and thus disqualified from taking his seat in the senate house. He made his defence to the people in a set speech, in which he declared that the senate had no right to keep him employed as quæstor for more than one year. “No one,” he added, “can say that I have received a penny in presents, or have put any one to charges on my own account. The purse which I took out full I have brought back empty; though I could name persons who took out casks filled with wine and brought them home charged with money.” He was triumphantly acquitted, and at once came forward as candidate for the tribunate. The senate exerted all their influence to prevent his election, and succeeded so far that his name stood only fourth on the list. But as soon as he entered office, no one disputed his title to be first.

[123 B.C.]

The die was now cast. For ten years he had held back from public life; but the vexatious course pursued by the senate roused him to action; the pent-up energy of his passionate nature burst forth, and he threw aside all restraints both of fear and of prudence.

Hitherto there had been no proof of the young speaker’s powers. Twice only had he spoken in public, and both times he had been on the losing side. But years of diligent study had passed, and he became the greatest orator that Rome had yet seen. Much as Cicero disliked Gracchus, he speaks with lively admiration of his genius, and laments the loss which Latin literature had sustained by his early death. The care which the young orator bestowed on preparation was extraordinary; he was the first to use regular gesticulation, and in his most fiery outbursts his voice was so modulated as never to offend the ear.