who addressed him; so that they who called him fierce, haughty, and inflexible were found to have accused him falsely. It was astonishing with what facility he seemed to win his popularity." 105 It would be well, could we more exactly describe the lovers and the enemies of the Tribune; but all to be known about them is derived from reflection rather than from positive information, that most of the Knights and the larger number of the lower classes were now sustaining him against the fierce repugnance of the wealthy and the powerful. It was before many of these multiplied undertakings had been begun, that Gracchus, 106 without any offer or exertion on his part, was elected Tribune for another year." 107 The confidence of his adherents was at its height; and his influence was so widely obeyed, that, while he had no need of using it directly in his own behalf, he was able to obtain the election of the candidate he preferred to the consulship.108 Whatever Caius had done or begun to do in his first year of office was, though completed and continued in his second term, but a drop in the torrent 105 Plut., C. Gr., 6. The picture may be further touched : "Dinanzi Ti tremava il senato; riverenti Monti, C. Gracco, Att. I. sc. 2. 106 Où πарayyéλλwv ovde periwv, "Neither asking nor canvassing," says Plutarch. C. Gr., 8. 107 Beginning at the close of A. C. 123. 108 Caius Fannius Strabo, whom we shall presently meet again to our sorrow. The election was conducted apparently under a new law of Caius's proposal, which hindered the control of the richer Centuries. "Ut ex confusis quinque classibus sorti centuriæ vocarentur." Ad C. Cæs. de Rep. Ordinan., II. 8. required to cleanse his country from its manifold pollutions. There were other stains upon its dominion, as he knew, to be effaced, and other claims upon his care to be answered, than those within the walls of Rome. A governor of one of the Spanish provinces had extorted a supply of grain from his unhappy subjects and sent it home; but Caius persuaded the Senate to sell it, so that its value might be returned to the towns from which it had been plundered, and furthermore to censure the governor for making the authority of the Commonwealth odious.109 A law was soon offered by the Tribune, ordering the assignment of the provinces to their respective magistrates before the elections, in such a manner as to prevent the rapacious Consul or Prætor from using the authority of his office to procure the government best suited to his intentions of pillage; the same law providing that the term of the provincial governors should not exceed a single year.110 similar desire to promote justice and to establish peace, where strife and rapine had reigned supreme and wild, Gracchus interested himself in the organization of Pergamus, acquired eleven years before by the Commonwealth; and it was to his exertions that its people really owed their preservation." In a Nor did Caius Gracchus, in his zeal for the oppressed and disordered provinces, overlook the com 109 Plut., C. Gr., 6. 110 Cic., Pro Dom., 9; Epist., Ad Div., I. 7, with the comment of Manutius. 111 Cic., In Verr. Act. II., Lib. III. 6. VOL. II. 33 plaints of the nearer and the more kindred subjects. He first proposed that the Latins, then that all the Italians,112 should be made full citizens of the Commonwealth; and it must have been in glowing language 113 that he depicted the change of the city to the nation, still, and more than ever, as he would say, the mistress of the world. Or his proposal of this his most vast reform may be regarded in another light, as one to which he was compelled by the fiercer spirit that had opposed and assailed him since the bitterness between his adversaries and his followers had been increased by the judicial changes heretofore described. In this case, the offer of Gracchus to the Italians would be the beginning of that Providential retribution by which the best and the worst of the Romans were brought to depend, and to depend in vain, upon the aid of the people they had conquered, broken, and disdained. However this may be, the friends and the foes of the Tribune were almost equally opposed to the offers he had, as they would say, too prodigally made; and from the very moment that his designs assumed their noblest proportions, their appearance is the more melancholy contrast to the perilous situation of their author and to the estranged demeanour of his countrymen. Some of the nearest adherents whom Caius had now turned against him.; 112 Here, however, we touch 113 See some words, but apparentupon disputed ground. Velleius ly of an earlier period, in Aul. Gell., Paterculus (II. 6) says to "all the X. 3. Italians." Cf. App., Bell. Civ., I. 23; Plut., C. Gr., 8, 9. and many of the mass of his supporters, angered by his exertions in behalf of the Italians and the strangers, withdrew their interest, as though it had been unworthily bestowed, and gradually prepared themselves, perhaps to hasten, at all events to rejoice in, his overthrow. He, for the moment, was absorbed in the preparation of leading a colony to Carthage, which he was the more eager to conduct, himself, on account of its being chiefly composed of Italian emigrants; and it appears to have escaped his observation, until his return after a brief absence, that the place he had held before the eyes and in some of the hearts of his countrymen was lost. This general desertion of the Tribune was caused alone neither by his absence nor by his proceedings before his departure. At the persuasion of the Senate, one of his own colleagues, Livius Drusus, a man distinguished by birth, wealth, and eloquence, had taken the lead of the opposition against Gracchus, then setting out, hardly already gone, to Carthage. To this new leader a craftier policy than any yet employed by his party suggested itself or was suggested; in consequence of which the projects of his fellow-Tribune were not only opposed, but replaced by other measures advanced in the name of the Senate,114 as if the object of Drusus, says the biographer, were to outbid Gracchus in the pleasure and the favor of the populace. Instead of the two or three colonies, formed of respectable citizens, and charged 114"Largitor nomine Senatus." Tac., Ann., III. 27. with duties to the Commonwealth, which Caius had proposed, Drusus began to talk of twelve that should be made up of the lowest classes and relieved from tax or charge of every kind; and so, whatever had been attempted in sincerity by the one was imitated, as if in mockery, by the other Tribune, until Drusus and the Senate were believed to be the benefactors, while Caius Gracchus was regarded as the disguised opponent of the people.' 115 These things are supposed to have occurred while Gracchus was absent, unable to defend himself against the insidious means by which his authority was undermined. As soon as he returned, which he appears to have done with haste, in consequence of the intelligence he must have received from Rome, the first point with him being the recovery of his faded popularity, he removed his residence from the Palatine to an humbler quarter near the Forum, and then made one more effort to bring such of his measures as were yet undecided before the Tribes. But his influence was too far upon the wane to shine again as that of the truest man who had yet appeared among the conquerors of the earth; and they who had basked the most in its rays were now the busiest in proclaiming or precipitating its extinction. Even the Consul who had owed his election to the Tribune now led the hue and cry against him, by ordering all Italians and strangers of every name to leave the city; and when Gracchus retorted with 115 Plut., C. Gr., 9. |