Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 5.djvu/51

 THE GRACCHI 23 quenched and to be again quenched with fiercer struggles, it was to smoulder and smoke and burst out time after time, till its work was done. Revolution could not restore the ancient character of the Roman nation, but it could check the progress of decay by burning away the more corrupted parts of it. It could de- stroy the aristocracy and the constitution which they had depraved, and under other forms preserve for a few more centuries the Roman dominion. Scipio Africanus, when he heard in Spain of the end of his brother-in-law, exclaimed "May all who act as he did perish like him !" There were to be victims enough and to spare before the bloody drama was played out. Quiet lasted for ten years, and then, precisely when he had reached his brother's age, Caius Gracchus came forward to avenge him, and carry the movement through another stage. Young Caius had been left one of the commissioners of the land law ; and it is particu- larly noticeable that, though the author of it had been killed, the law had survived him, being too clearly right and politic in itself to be openly set aside. For two years the commissioners had continued to work, and in that time forty thousand families were settled on various parts of the ager piiblicus, which the patricians had been compelled to resign. This was all which they could do. The displace- ment of one set of inhabitants and the introduction of another could not be ac complished without quarrels, complaints, and perhaps some injustice. Those who entered on possession were not always satisfied. The commissioners became un- popular. When the cries against them became loud enough, they were suspended, and the law was then quietly repealed. The Senate had regained its hold over the Assembly, and had a further opportunity of showing its recovered ascendency when, two years after the murder of Tiberius Gracchus, one of his friends intro- duced a bill to make the tribunes legally re-eligible. Caius Gracchus actively sup- ported the change, but it had no success ; and, waiting till times had altered, and till he had arrived at an age when he could carry weight, the young brother re- tired from politics, and spent the next few years with the army in Africa and Sar- dinia. He served with distinction ; he made a name for himself, both as a soldier and an administrator. Had the Senate left him alone, he might have been satis- fied with a regular career, and have risen by the ordinary steps to the consulship. But the Senate saw in him the possibilities of a second Tiberius ; the higher his reputation, the more formidable he became to them. They vexed him with petty prosecutions, charged him with crimes which had no existence, and at length, by suspicion and injustice, drove him into open war with them. Caius Gracchus had a broader intellect than his brother, and a character considerably less noble. The land question he perceived was but one of many questions. The true source of the disorders of the commonwealth was the Senate itself. The administration of the empire was in the hands of men totally unfit to be trusted with it, and there he thought the reform must comrrfence. He threw himself on the people. He was chosen tribune in 123, ten years exactly after Tiberius. He had studied the disposition of parties. He had seen his brother fall because the Equites and the senators, the great commoners and the nobles, were combined against him. He revived the Agrarian law as a matter of course, but he disarmed the opposi-