BOOK III. PERIOD OF DECAY. A. C. 137-60. "Istoria lunga, Dai Gracchi in poi fian le romane stragi." ALFIERI, Bruto Secondo, Att. I. sc. 1. "Inde jus vi obrutum, potentiorque habitus prior; discordiæque civium antea conditionibus sanari solitæ, ferro dijudicate."-VELLEIUS PATERCULUS, II. 3. BOOK III. PERIOD OF DECAY. CHAPTER I. THE GRACCHI : REFORM. "Tiberius et C. Gracchus vindicare plebem in libertatem et paucorum scelera patefacere cœpere."-SALLUST, Jug., XLII. "If that people had not been prepared and ripe for destruction, there had happened an alteration which might have given some respite to it."-CLARENDON, Hist. Rebellion, Book XIII. OFTEN," exclaimed the Censor Cato before the Roman people, "often have ye heard me complain how our Commonwealth is laboring under two dif ferent vices, avarice and luxury, those two that have been the bane of all great empires."1 His complaints are susceptible of a broader application than he intended; and the luxury he censured may be interpreted as the abuse of power already gained, while the avarice he meant to stigmatize may be considered as the desire of dominion not yet acquired, This desire might be shown and this abuse indulged by the rich towards the poor in Rome, or by the Romans collectively towards the nations they had 1 Liv., XXXIV. 4. overcome; but in either case, the vices, as Cato called them, were equally fatal. Their origin is explained by the history of preceding years, which describes the relations between the bond and the free, the foreign and the native, the wealthy and the needy classes of the Roman world. It remains to pursue their growth, if growth they had, or to behold their extinction, if extinction was to be their doom. It was sure that some attempt, at any rate, would be made to scare the flock of devouring birds from the living body on which they were about to pounce, before it should become a carcass, dead and torn. But that the attempt to save the Commonwealth and its liberties would succeed was not so sure. Yet there, in the midst of perilous changes and ill-boding omens, was the home which a woman preferred to the offer of a crown and a royal spouse in another land. The daughter of Scipio Africanus and the widow of his defender, Sempronius Gracchus, Cornelia, was living, it seemed, to educate her children in the love of their name, the honor of their country, and the resolution to avert the evil days that were at hand. Proud as she was of her father and her illustrious race, she was prouder still of the hopes which were yet to be fulfilled in her sons; and to the two who survived, when one after another had been taken away, she clung with an affection that watched every moment of their youth as though it were the beginning 2 Ptolemy of Egypt (whether Philometor or Euergetes is uncertain). Plut., Tib. Gracch., 1. of an age of usefulness or fame. The people, who looked up to her as to a queen, caught something of her enthusiastic confidence in her children; while those who were admitted to her house, or were trusted to complete the education she began,3 appear to have been persuaded, as of themselves, that the mother of the Gracchi was, as she deserved to be, the mother of sons who would grow to be heroes as naturally as they grew to be men. Tiberius Sempronius, the elder of the two, was, while yet a youth, elected by the Augurs to a place in their college, and was soon after taken by Scipio Africanus on the expedition which terminated with the fall of Carthage. The gallantry he showed in the army, of which he was the first to mount the walls of the fated city, was, in his day, a necessary element of the virtue he practised in retirement and cultivation at home. Some years glided away in peaceful studies and amongst earnest friends, of whom his mother, his brother, and his early instructors seem to have been the nearest, when Tiberius, still under the age prescribed by law, received the appointment of Quæstor to the consular forces employed at the siege of Numantia, in Spain.5 3" Gracchorum eloquentiæ multum contulisse accepimus Corneliam matrem," etc. Quint., Inst. Orat., I. 1. "Filios non tam in gremio educatos quam in sermone matris." Cic., Brut., 58. Every one remembers the story of Cornelia and her jewels. Val. Max., IV. 4, init. 4 If he was born, as Plutarch implies (C. Gracch., 1), in A. C. 163, and was elected Augur before going to Carthage, A. C. 147. Plut., Tib. Gr., 4. 5 A. C. 137. Plut., Tib. Gr., 5. |