On the appointed morning the impetuous Flaccus appeared with a large retinue armed with daggers. Gracchus followed with a considerable suite. Flaccus spoke vehemently to the tribes, while Gracchus stood aloof in the portico of the temple, in which Opimius was offering sacrifice. Here he was encountered by a retainer of the consul, who insolently pushed Gracchus aside, crying, “Make way for honest men!” Gracchus cast an angry look upon the man, who presently fell stabbed to the heart by an unknown hand. A cry of murder was raised, and the crowd fled in alarm to the Forum. Gracchus retired to his house, regretting the rash imprudence of his followers. Meantime the body of the slain man was paraded before the eyes of the terrified people. The senate armed the consuls with a decree, by which Gracchus was proclaimed a public enemy, and Opimius took station during the night in the temple of Castor, by the side of the Forum. He summoned the senate to a special sitting early next morning, and also sent to all on whom he could rely, desiring them to come armed to the Forum, and each man to bring two armed slaves. With this force he occupied the Capitol at daybreak, and prepared to execute the will of the senate.
Gracchus was irresolute; but Flaccus summoned to his house all who were ready to resist senatorial authority. Here he armed them with the Celtic weapons which he had brought home from his Gallic campaigns, and kept up their courage by deep potations of wine. Early in the morning he occupied a strong position on the Aventine, where he was joined by Gracchus, who sighed over the necessity of using force.
When the senate met, the popular leaders were summoned to attend in their places, and explain the proceedings of the previous day. They answered by proclaiming liberty to all slaves who should join them. Nothing could more show the desperate aspect which the struggle had assumed. Yet before blood flowed, Gracchus insisted on trying negotiation, and Q. Flaccus, a handsome youth of eighteen, son of the ex-tribune, was sent. But already the senate had invested Opimius with dictatorial power. The only answer the consul returned was that the leaders must appear before the senate, and explain their conduct; and when young Quintus came back with a fresh message, Opimius arrested him. He now set a price on the heads of Gracchus and Fulvius Flaccus, and ordered an immediate attack upon the Aventine. Under arms appeared the noblest men at Rome, P. Lentulus, chief of the senate, old Metellus Macedonicus, and many others. For their leader they chose not the consul, but L. Junius Brutus, the Spanish conqueror. The attack was opened under cover of a shower of arrows from a body of Cretan bowmen. Little or no resistance was offered. Flaccus fled with his eldest son. Gracchus retired into the temple of Diana, where he was hardly prevented from putting an end to his own life by two faithful friends, the knights Pomponius and Lætorius. Urged by them to flee, he threw himself on his knees, and prayed the goddess to punish the unworthy people of Rome by everlasting slavery. All three then took their way down to the Porta Trigemina, hotly pursued. Pomponius made a stand in the gateway to cover his friend’s escape across the Sublician bridge, and fell pierced with many wounds. Lætorius showed no less devotion by gallantly turning to bay upon the bridge till he knew that Gracchus was safe over, when he sprang into the river and perished. Gracchus with a single slave reached the Grove of the Furies, and here both were found dead. The faithful slave had first held the sword to his master’s heart, and then fallen upon it himself. One Septimuleius cut off the head of Gracchus, and was rewarded by the fierce Opimius with its weight in gold.[81]
Flaccus and his eldest son had found shelter in the bath-house of a friend. The consul’s myrmidons tracked them, and threatened to set fire to the house. The owner, alarmed for his property, allowed another to disclose the secret, though he did not choose to speak the word himself. They were dragged forth and slain with every mark of indignity. The handsome youth who had been arrested before the assault commenced was allowed to put himself to death.
Great numbers of the partisans of Gracchus were thrown into prison, and put to death without trial. The stream of Tiber flowed thick with corpses. The inconstant mob plundered their houses without molestation. The widows and friends of the slain were forbidden by consular edict to wear mourning. When the bloody work was done, the city was purged by a formal lustration; and the consul, by order of the senate, laid the foundations of a temple of Concord. Under the inscription placed on it by Opimius was found next morning another to this effect:
“Workers of Discord raise a shrine to Concord.”
But none dared openly to avow themselves friends of the Gracchi. The son of Caius died soon after; and except Sempronia, the widow of Scipio, none of the race remained. Cornelia retired to Misenum, where she lived for many years, not so much sorrowing for the loss of her sons as dwelling with delight on the memory of their acts. Many visited her in retirement, chiefly learned Greeks, to hear the story of the bold reformers. Calmly and loftily she told the tale, declaring that her sons had found worthy graves in the temples of the gods. In after days her statue in bronze was set up in the Forum, with the Greek sandals on her feet which had been made a reproach to her illustrious father. Beneath it were placed these words only: To Cornelia, the Mother of the Gracchi.[b]
To quote again from Beesly’s[c] acute summing-up of Caius Gracchus.
“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. In such vast schemes there must have been much that was merely tentative. But had he lived and retained his influence we may be sure that the Empire would have been established a century earlier than it was.”[c]