The Historians' History of the World 05

Great numbers of the partisans of Gracchus were thrown into prison, and put to death without trial. The stream of Tiber flowed thick with corpses. The inconstant mob plundered their houses without molestation. The widows and friends of the slain were forbidden by consular edict to wear mourning. When the bloody work was done, the city was purged by a formal lustration; and the consul, by order of the senate, laid the foundations of a temple of Concord. Under the inscription placed on it by Opimius was found next morning another to this effect:

“Workers of Discord raise a shrine to Concord.”

But none dared openly to avow themselves friends of the Gracchi. The son of Caius died soon after; and except Sempronia, the widow of Scipio, none of the race remained. Cornelia retired to Misenum, where she lived for many years, not so much sorrowing for the loss of her sons as dwelling with delight on the memory of their acts. Many visited her in retirement, chiefly learned Greeks, to hear the story of the bold reformers. Calmly and loftily she told the tale, declaring that her sons had found worthy graves in the temples of the gods. In after days her statue in bronze was set up in the Forum, with the Greek sandals on her feet which had been made a reproach to her illustrious father. Beneath it were placed these words only: To Cornelia, the Mother of the Gracchi.b

To quote again from Beesly’sc

acute summing-up of Caius Gracchus.

“The man who originates is always so far greater than the man who imitates, and Caius only followed where his brother led. The very dream which Caius told to the people shows that his brother’s spell was still on him, and his telling it, together with his impetuous oratory and his avowed fatalism, militates against the theory that Tiberius was swayed by impulse and sentiment, and he by calculation and reason. But no doubt he profited by experience of the past. He had learned how to bide his time, and to think generosity wasted on the murderous crew whom he had sworn to punish. Pure in life, perfectly prepared for a death to which he considered himself foredoomed, glowing with one fervent passion, he took up his brother’s cause with a double portion of his brother’s spirit, because he had thought more before action, because he had greater natural eloquence, and because being forewarned he was forearmed.

“In spite of the labours of recent historians, the legislation of Caius Gracchus is still hard to understand. Where the original authorities contradict each other, as they often do, probable conjecture is the most which can be attained, and no attempt will be made here to specify what were the measures of the first tribunate of Caius and what of the second. The general scope and tendency of his legislation is clear enough. It was to overthrow the senatorial government, and in the new government to give the chief share of the executive power to the mercantile class, and the chief share of the legislative power to Italians. These were his immediate aims. Probably he meant to keep all the strings he thus set in motion in his own hands, so as to be practically monarch of Rome. But whether he definitely conceived the idea of monarchy, and, looking beyond his own requirements, pictured to himself a successor at some future time inheriting the authority which he had established, no one can say. In such vast schemes there must have been much that was merely tentative. But had he lived and retained his influence we may be sure that the Empire would have been established a century earlier than it was.”c

George Longd says: “We may acquit the Gracchi of the Roman vice of greediness, but not of ill-directed ambition. Their object was not to enrich themselves, but to destroy the power of the Optimates by rousing against them the people, and using their votes to make a revolution. But this popular agitation increased an evil which already existed. The Gracchi used the popular vote for their purpose, as the nobles had long used it for their ends. Under the name of the public interest men on both sides sought their own.”

FOOTNOTES

[74] [The number of sons qualified to hold public property was two.]

[75] [George Longd defends their authenticity, saying: “The critics whose eyes are so sharp that they cannot see what is before them and see what is not, tell us that these fragments are rhetorical inventions. Now Gracchus’ speeches were read in Cicero’s time and later; and it is as reasonable to suppose that Appian and Plutarch used these speeches, as to suppose that they invented speeches or copied from those who invented them. The speeches are like genuine stuff.”]

[76] [The difficulty in the way of the first alternative here suggested is that in all probability Octavius would have vetoed any proposal for reform. The second alternative was impracticable because Tiberius was constitutionally ineligible to re-election. It is doubtful whether any constitutional means of reform existed.]