Upon the day of the meeting of the tribes one of the followers of the consul Opimius, who had taken occasion to insult Gaius Gracchus, was stabbed by some unknown person. The senatorial party now had the opportunity to secure their prey, and immediately proceeded to accomplish their purpose. The meeting of the comitia tributa was broken up, and a meeting of the Senate called, at which Gracchus was declared a public enemy and the consuls directed to take steps to secure the safety of the republic.
It is outside the purpose of this work to go into the details of the butchery of the next day in which Gaius Gracchus, Fulvius Flaccus, and three thousand of their supporters lost their lives. The charge that Gaius Gracchus had planned to do what Julius Cæsar was to do in the next century, make himself dictator, or emperor, of Rome, is best disproved by the absolute lack of any military preparations on the part of Gracchus, even to the extent of securing his own safety when he knew his life was in constant danger.
Although the friends of Gracchus and Flaccus had gathered together to protect their leaders, they were without either proper arms or any system of military organization, and were cut down, almost without resistance, by the armed forces which had been collected by the consul, Opimius. Mention might be made of the fruitless heroism displayed by some of those friends of Gaius Gracchus who remained true to him to the last; but the flashes of brightness were few, and the day must ever be recorded as one of the darkest in all Roman history.
It was this day that marked the final failure of the last movement which might have saved and rejuvenated the great Roman republic; it was this day that showed the right of manhood was no longer the highest right in Rome, and that the rule of special and vested interests was now supreme.
The singleness of purpose and openness of character in Tiberius Gracchus leave no opening for speculation or doubt as to the motives from which he acted or the objects which he sought. Both the character and the actions of Gaius Gracchus are more complex than those of his brother, and many historians have doubted the disinterestedness of his agitation for popular rights. The final summaries upon the character of this man, of two recent historians, are as follows:
"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." (Beesly.)
"It is clear that he did not wish to place the Roman Republic on a new democratic basis, but that he wished to abolish it, and introduce in its stead an absolute despotism, in the form of an unlimited tribuneship for life. Nor can he be blamed for it; as, though an absolute monarchy is a great misfortune for a nation, it is a less misfortune than an absolute oligarchy. Besides this, he was fired with the passion for a speedy vengeance, and was in fact a political incendiary—the author not only of the one hundred years' revolution, which dates from him, but the founder of that terrible urban proletariat which, utterly demoralized by corn largesses and the flattery of the classes above it, and at the same time conscious of its power, lay like an incubus for five hundred years on the Roman commonwealth, and only perished with it.
"Many of the fundamental maxims of Roman monarchy may be traced to Gracchus. He first laid down that all the land of subject communities was to be regarded as the private property of the state—a maxim first applied to vindicate the right of the state to tax the land and then to send out colonies to it, which later became a fundamental principle of law under the empire. He invented the tactics by which his successors broke down the governing aristocracy, and substituted strict and judicious administration for the previous misgovernment. He first opened the way to a reconciliation between Rome and the provinces, and his attempt to rebuild Carthage and to give an opportunity for Italian emigration to the provinces was the first link in the chain of that beneficial course of action. Right and wrong, fortune and misfortune, were so inextricably blended in this singular man and in this marvelous political constellation, that it may well beseem history in this case—though it beseems her but seldom—to reserve her judgment." (Mommsen.)
Much of the criticism of each of these historians is manifestly true; but the charge that Gaius Gracchus contemplated the substitution of the rule of a despot for the rule of the oligarchy seems not to be borne out by the facts.
A true understanding of the policies and objects of Gaius Gracchus can be had only when we start our investigation with an appreciation of the strongest motive which urged him onward. This motive was not, on the one hand, a deep-rooted love and reverence for popular rights (as was undoubtedly the case with his brother Tiberius); nor, on the other hand, was it selfish interest, or the desire to usurp to himself the supreme power in the state. The strongest influence in the life and character of Gaius Gracchus was the desire to be avenged upon the senatorial party for the murder of his brother. His efforts in behalf of popular rights were instigated primarily by the desire to show respect to his brother's memory and to carry out his brother's policies. Upon this hypothesis the life and character of Gaius Gracchus can be easily understood.