Roman Tweezers
(In the British Museum)
CHAPTER XVI. THE JUGURTHINE AND OTHER WARS
[123-112 B.C.]
The cruel times which followed made the best men of both parties regret the untimely end of those who had sacrificed wealth, rank, tranquillity, in the hope of reforming the state by peaceful methods. But Marius was not the worst of the successors of the Gracchi. So savage were the party quarrels which followed, that good men shrank in despair from the cause of reform, and the conduct of the popular party was abandoned to needy demagogues. Such is the common course of revolutions. They begin with noble aspirations; they end in reckless violence. At length public spirit is lost, and all men, sighing for tranquillity, seek it in the strong rule of an armed soldier. It is a thrice-told tale.
As the murder of Tiberius had been avenged upon Nasica, so there was even now found a tribune bold enough to indict Opimius. The accuser bore the time-honoured name of Decius; the defender was that Carbo who was more than suspected of Scipio’s murder, and who was now consul (120 B.C.); his eloquence and the terror that prevailed procured an acquittal. But Carbo, though he earned the gratitude of the nobility by defending their champion, did not find his eloquence equally effectual in defending himself. It was at that time the practice of young Romans who aspired to distinction to attract public notice by indicting some great offender before the people. L. Licinius Crassus, son of Crassus the pontifex, and brother-in-law of C. Gracchus, though only one-and-twenty years of age, felt within him that power of speech which in later days gained him the appellation of the orator; and he singled out Carbo for attack. So fierce was the invective of the young accuser that Carbo put an end to his own life by poison.