Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.4, 1865).djvu/550

 512 CAIUS GRACCHUS. outrage, committed too upon the person of the greatest and most considerable man in Rome, was never either punished or inquired into thoroughly, for the populace opposed and hindered any judicial investigation, for fear that Caius should be implicated in the charge if proceedings were car- ried on. This, however, had happened some time before. But in Africa, where at present Caius was engaged in the repeopling of Carthage, which he named Junonia, many ominous appearances, which presaged mischief, are reported to have been sent from the gods. For a sudden gust of wind falling upon the first standard, and the stand- ard-bearer holding it fast, the staff broke ; another sudden storm blew away the sacrifices, which were laid upon the altars, and carried them beyond the bounds laid out for the city ; and the wolves came and carried away the very marks that were set up to show the boundary. Caius, notwithstanding all this, ordered and despatched the whole business in the space of seventy days, and then returned to Rome, understanding how Fulvius was prose- cuted by Drusus, and that the present juncture of affairs would not suffer him to be absent. For Lucius Opimius, one who sided with the nobility, and was of no small authority in the senate, who had formerly sued to be consul, but was repulsed by Caius's interest, at the time when Fannius was elected, was in a fair way now of being chosen consul, having a numerous company of sup- porters. And it was generally believed, if he did obtain it, that he would wholly ruin Caius, whose power was already in a declining condition ; and the people were not so apt to admire his actions as formerly, because there were so many others who every day contrived new ways to please them, with which the senate readily complied. After his return to Rome, he quitted his house on the Palatine Mount, and went to live near the market-place, endeavoring to make himself more popular in those parts,