Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/308

 300 SHORT NOTICES AprU Pallava Art '. in The Pallavas by Professor G. Jouveau-Dubreuil of Pon- dicherry. The learned French professor, one of the sanest and most accurate of scholars, has no doubt whatever that the AmaravatI marbles, partly to be seen on the British Museum staircase, are ' almost wholly Roman in workmanship '. V. A. S. In Den Antikke Tradition om Gracchemc (Kristiania : Cappelen, 1919) Dr. S. P. Thomas has set himself the diflScult task of examining and estimating the value of the various sources of information about the Gracchi, and has exhibited a very sober judgement in his conclusions. Naturally it was almost impossible that an impartial account of them should have been written : either optimate or popular prejudice was sure to colour the account given of the facts. Thus controversy seems to have raged as to whether ' the mother of the Gracchi ' approved of her sons* actions or not. If the letter to Gaius, mentioned by Cicero, of which frag- ments are preserved in the manuscripts of Nepos, is genuine, as Dr. Thomas maintains, she certainly did not. His suggestion that her letters were published between 55 and 46 B.C. seems likely. Of contemporary or nearly contemporary documents, we hear of a letter of Gaius to Pomponius mentioned by Cicero in the De Divinatione, and probably of the treatise referred to by Plutarch, who stated that, according to Gaius, Tiberius received his first impulse to land-reform when he saw the desolated condition of Etruria on his journey to Spain. Speeches of Gaius were long extant and widely read. Of the nearly contemporary annalists Dr. Thomas attaches much importance to Famnius, who must have been used by the author upon whom Plutarch depended most. The ' Auctor ad Herennium ' shows his sympathy for the Gracchi. Dr. Thomas accepts the view that the fragments of Diodorus's 34th and 35th books go back to Posidonius. The latter's judgement was balanced ; he approved of agrarian reform, but as a provincial he disliked the judicial changes. He must, however, have derived his knowledge of the facts from a Sullan annalist. Cicero's nearness to the time and the fact that he could have conversed with contemporaries of the Gracchi make his numerous state- ments about the Gracchi valuable : on the whole he takes the optimate view, but admires the talents and oratorical powers of the brothers. In certain passages it is pointed out that he does C. Gracchus the honour of imitation. The tradition of Livy can be obtained not only from the periochae but from later writers such as Valerius Maximus and Orosius. Livy and Plutarch must in part have used the same material. Plutarch certainly in the main relied on a biographer, who had an antiquarian tendency and was friendly to the Gracchi. Appian takes an Italian point of view, and is more interested in the economic than in the political aspect of the times : all attempts to identify his authority have failed. Dr. Thomas has fully mastered all the literature of the subject, and makes a number of interesting suggestions of his own. One of these may be mentioned. Plutarch calls the tribune who was elected in place of Octavius, ' Mucius ' ; Livy calls him ' Minucius ', probably by error. This error may have arisen from the fact that the annalist they copied wrote the name in the old fashion * Muucius ', which writing continued at least to 75 B.C.