Rioting, indeed, broke out in the Capitol almost before the sun rose and fighting with sticks and stones between those who wanted Tiberius elected and those who did not. As always happens, many joined in who neither knew nor cared what the trouble was all about. When Tiberius himself appeared he raised his hand to summon his friends to gather round him. This was reported to the Senate by a man who cried, ‘Tiberius Gracchus has raised his hand to his head: he is asking the citizens to crown him.’ On this Nasica, a senator who hated Gracchus, demanded that he should be put to death as a traitor. When the consul refused Nasica rushed out with a body of senators and, charging the people who stood round Tiberius, broke through and killed him almost at once (133). In the panic many others were slain and trampled underfoot. The body of Gracchus was cast into the Tiber. Many of his supporters were imprisoned. Others had all their property taken away.
The senators doubtless hoped that, Tiberius dead, his work would soon be forgotten. But the evils he had tried to remedy remained. And abroad serving in the army was his brother Caius, who did not forget. ‘Whither can I go?’ said Caius. ‘What place is there for me in Rome? The Capitol reeks with my brother’s blood. In my home my mother sits weeping and lamenting for her murdered son.’ His was a nature very different from his brother’s. Tiberius was quiet, gentle, kindly, naturally rather dreamy; a man who in happier times would have been content with the uneventful life of a gentleman. Caius was fiery and passionate, filled with an energy that must have found some outlet for itself in whatever circumstances he had lived. He loved his brother and his death filled his heart with glowing anger and a fixed determination that his work and life should not be wasted. He would carry out Tiberius’s ideals; and carry them farther than Tiberius had ever dreamed.
Caius Gracchus was nine years younger than Tiberius and a man of more remarkable character and more brilliant gifts than his brother. The sense of a great wrong made Tiberius burn with indignation, and in his indignation he took to politics; Caius had a natural genius for politics. His mind ranged forward into the future; whereas Tiberius worked blindly, in the dark, Caius knew where he wanted to go. And he understood men as his brother had never done. Without any of the shy aloofness that at times gave Tiberius the appearance of more strength than he really possessed, Caius made people like him without moving away by so much as an inch from the purpose he had in mind. That purpose was a change far more revolutionary than Tiberius had dreamed of.
Only twenty years of age at the time of his brother’s murder, Caius spent the next ten years in public service. Like Aemilianus he held it every man’s duty to work for the Republic. But while Aemilianus thought that for such work obedience, faithfulness, courage, temperance were all that were required of a man, Caius, who had these virtues in a high degree, had also an active questioning mind. It did not seem to him that the men who ruled the State were wise or just or generous enough to lay down, once for all, the lines on which it was to move for ever. The citizen had a duty to the Republic beyond that of loyal and obedient devotion. He must use not only his arm in its service but his mind also. He must help it to grow; make Rome worthy of the greatness about which people talked so lightly and easily. The greatness had been won at a fearful price. Hundreds of thousands of Roman soldiers had laid down their lives to make it; hundreds of thousands more had given their best years to its service, asking no reward but that the Republic should stand safe. It could, Caius thought, only be safe, only be great in so far as it became more and more the city of free men in fact as well as name.
With such thoughts as these moving in his mind he turned in loathing from the life of the young Roman noble of his own age and class. He had no use for personal luxury; wine and fine clothes and a gorgeous house in which to live a life of ease and idleness—these things were nothing to him. While serving abroad in Spain, Sardinia, and elsewhere, he shared the hardships of his soldiers, and spent his own money in the effort to make their hard lot less severe. Such leisure as he had was occupied in reading. In this way he disciplined and fortified his mind. Moreover, Caius had before him a fixed purpose, a clearly determined work in life. For that he was preparing. One of his weapons was to be the art of speech. He studied, therefore, particularly the works of the great Greek orators. He wanted to learn, and he did learn, how to use words to persuade men and impel them to action. He made himself one of the greatest orators Rome knew. His speeches are lost, but accounts of them remain, and they tell how Caius could set his hearers on fire, stir them to tears or anger.
ELABORATE LAMP
to show the luxury
of later times
When, nine years after Tiberius’s death, Caius Gracchus came back to Rome (124), he found that men were waiting eagerly for him. Tiberius had not been forgotten. The poor hoped, the rich feared that Caius had come as his avenger. When he stood for the tribuneship the party in the Senate that had thwarted and finally murdered Tiberius strained every nerve to prevent Caius’s election. They did not wait to hear what his plans were. They knew that he belonged to the men of the new generation who wanted far-reaching changes, and they believed that any change must be at their expense. They at once began attacking Caius. They accused him of coming home before his time of service abroad was up. They even declared that he, the most scrupulously honest and disinterested of men, had made more money than he ought to have done from the various posts he had held. Caius turned on them. He had already served twelve years in the army. As for making money: ‘I am the only man who went out with a full purse and returned with an empty one. Others took out casks of wine for themselves, and when they had emptied them brought the casks back filled with gold and silver.’ He lived not in the rich quarter of Rome among the high-born and wealthy, but among the poor near the Forum. He was elected tribune by an overwhelming majority and at once set to work.
His main idea was a really great and original one; nothing less than the extension of Roman citizenship, in so far as voting rights went, to the people of Italy. The Italians were called to serve in Rome’s armies. The best soldiers, indeed, had always come from outside the capital. The Italians paid heavier taxes; they ought to share in the benefits of Rome and have a voice in its government. Caius Gracchus indeed dreamed of making the Government of Rome a real democracy. It was a magnificent dream; but the people were not ready for it. In fact it was only after a bitter war that the Italians won from the Romans the right to vote. Gracchus knew that his plan could not be carried through at once; but he had worked out a series of Bills which would, he believed, pave the way for it. Until they were through he said nothing of his great scheme.