His death was sudden and mysterious. One day after speaking in the Senate he returned home apparently well and in his ordinary calm frame of mind. Nothing had occurred to disturb him. He did not seem to be disturbed about anything. Next morning he was found dead in his bed. What had happened was never known. It was whispered about that he had been murdered.
[V]
The Gracchi
No account of the heroes of Roman History would be complete or truthful which left out the women. Although the Roman woman was not supposed to take any share in public affairs, although she was, until she married, subject to the authority of her father, and afterwards to that of her husband, there are innumerable stories which show how great was the real part played by women in Roman life, even in quite early times. They were often as well educated as the men, sometimes better.
This was clearly the case with Cornelia, the daughter of Scipio Africanus, and wife of Tiberius Gracchus the elder. Left a widow when the eldest of her three children, named Tiberius after his father, was but a lad, she conducted their training herself. From her her sons and daughter learned to be simple and hardy in their habits, truthful and upright in their minds, and to care for things of the spirit rather than of the body, as she did herself. When her friends boasted to her of the rich furnishing of their houses, of their robes of silk, their ornaments and jewels, Cornelia would turn to her children and say, ‘These are my treasures.’ She taught Tiberius and Caius and their sister that what mattered was not what a man had but what he was. They were rich. They bore an honoured name. But these things would not give honour unless they had the soul of honour in themselves. They must strive not for their own pleasure or comfort or even for their own personal glory, but to live a life of true service to their fellow citizens. And that meant that they must see things as they were, and not be contented with the names people gave them. They wanted to see Rome great and to help it to grow greater. She taught them that a city, like a man, was great only when it strove for right and justice. Mere wealth and power did not make it so.
These thoughts sank into the minds of the young Gracchi. As they grew up they cared for Greek learning, art, and literature, poetry, and all the things that make life beautiful, as Scipio Aemilianus and Laelius did; but it troubled them, as it had not troubled Scipio, that these good things reached only the few, while the great body of the people had no share in them at all. To them, as once to Caius Flaminius, it seemed wrong as well as dangerous that Rome should be made up, as they saw that it was, of two sorts of people, ever more and more separated from each other; the few who had everything and the many who had nothing. They could not feel, as Coriolanus had done, as Fabius had done, as Cato did, and as Scipio Aemilianus, it seemed to them, was doing more and more, that all good was to be found among the well-to-do and cultured few, and that what happened to the many did not matter. It seemed to them that it did matter if the many were poor, ignorant, stupid. It was not necessary that they should be so. They were ignorant and stupid because they were poor. If their lot were less hard they might be clever and good, or at any rate better than at present.
So it seemed to Tiberius Gracchus and later to his younger brother Caius, as they looked at what they saw in the light of what Cornelia had taught them. They could not find life beautiful while so many people were wretched, or feel that Rome was the city of their dreams, however rich and powerful it might be, however many lands across the seas owned its sway, so long as the ordinary men who served as soldiers in Rome’s armies, the ordinary women who kept their homes and brought up their children, were miserable.
The great wars which brought glory to generals and wealth and pride to Rome actually made the poor more miserable, for many reasons, and for two in particular. One was the growing number of slaves in the city. After every campaign thousands of prisoners were taken and these prisoners were not given back at the end of the war; they became the slaves of the conqueror. There were so many slaves in Rome after the wars with Sicily, Carthage, Spain, Greece, Asia Minor, that it was by no means easy for the ordinary Roman to get work. The other reason was the difficulty of getting land. Once, before the long wars, Italy had been a country of small farmers and peasants who lived on a little piece of land, sometimes rented and sometimes their own, and cultivated it. There were very few of these happy farmers now. The men had been called away to the wars; many never came back. What happened was this. While the man was away at the wars, his wife, with children to look after, and less strong than he, could seldom cultivate the land fully. Even if she managed to keep the children fed, she had no money or produce over with which to pay the rent. Then the landlord would turn her out and take the plot and add it to his own estate. This was happening all over Italy. If the owner were not turned out, the land went to rack and ruin from neglect. Thus many a soldier, when he did come back, found his home gone. Others, weary, worn, and perhaps disabled after long years of the hardships of war, had neither the strength nor energy to set to the heavy work of digging and preparing land that had been neglected for years. At the same time the common lands, which were supposed to belong to the whole people, who might graze their cattle or cut wood on them, were taken in bit by bit by the big landlords in the war years. Thus men who wanted land could not get it. Big estates grew bigger, and they were run largely by slave-labour. The independent husbandman, who had been the backbone of the Roman army, was vanishing. A few people began, in Scipio’s day, to be worried about this question of the land, because they saw that if the peasants and farmers disappeared, the best soldiers would disappear also.
All this was well known; it had been going on for long. People talked, but nothing was done. Sometimes, however, there comes a man who has the power to see and be moved to action by a thing which most people, out of habit or laziness, take as a matter of course. Tiberius Gracchus was such a man. In his young manhood he was quiet, rather shy, and very silent; he thought a great deal and said little about it. Some people regarded him as slow. His was the slowness of a mind that takes a long time to be sure of a thing but, once sure, never lets go. When he did speak, men observed that his remarks were just and well considered and went to the heart of the matter. His devotion to duty was obvious; as a soldier he won the respect and love of his men by his unvarying fairness of temper and the fact that he never asked them to take a risk or bear a hardship that he did not share himself. And he acquired, too, a reputation for integrity which was, as Plutarch tells us, of infinite value.
Tiberius Gracchus. The Value of a Reputation for Integrity
After the Libyan expedition Gracchus was elected quaestor, and it was his lot to serve against the Numantines under the Consul Gaius Mancinus, who had some good qualities, but was the most unfortunate of Roman generals. Thus unexpected situations and reverses in the field brought more clearly into light, not only the ability and courage of Tiberius, but—what was more remarkable—his respect and regard for his superior, who was so crushed by disaster that he hardly knew whether he was in command or not. After some decisive defeats Mancinus left his camp and attempted to retire by night, but the Numantines, being aware of his movements, at once occupied the camp, fell upon his troops as they fled, made havoc of the rear, and drove the whole army on to difficult ground, from which it was impossible to escape. Whereupon, in despair of forcing a way into safety, he sent envoys with proposals for a truce and conditions of peace. The enemy replied that they trusted no one except Tiberius and insisted that he should be sent to them. This attitude was partly due to their high opinion of Tiberius, whose reputation was familiar to all, partly to the memory of his father, who after fighting against the Spanish tribes and subduing many of them settled terms of peace with the Numantines and persuaded the Roman people strictly to confirm and keep them. Thus it came about that Tiberius was sent; and after some give and take in negotiations he made a treaty, and beyond question saved twenty thousand Roman citizens, besides attendants and camp followers.