Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.4, 1865).djvu/562

 554 TIBERIUS AND CAIUS GRACCHUS, to money, was chiefly remarkable in this; that in office and the administration of public affairs, they kept them- selves from the imputation of unjust gain ; whereas Agis might justly be offended, if he had only that mean com- mendation given him, that he took nothing wrongfully from any man, seeing he distributed his own fortunes, which, in ready money only, amounted to the value of six hundred talents, amongst his fellow-citizens. Extor- tion would have appeared a crime of a strange nature to him, who esteemed it a piece of covetousness to possess, though never so justly gotten, greater riches than his neighbors. Their political actions, also, and the state revolutions they attempted, were very different in magnitude. The chief things in general that the two Romans commonly aimed at, were the settlement of cities and mending of highways; and, in particular, the boldest design which Tiberius is famed for, was the recovery of the public lands ; and Caius gained his greatest reputation by the addition, for the exercise of judicial powers, of three hun- dred of the order of knights to the same number of sen- ators. Whereas the alteration which A ois and Cleomenes O made, was in a quite different kind. They did not set about removing partial evils and curing petty incidents of disease, which would have been (as Plato says), like cutting off one of the Hydra's heads, the very means to increase the number ; but they instituted a thorough ref- ormation, such as would free the country at once from all its grievances, or rather, to speak more truly, they reversed that former change which had been the cause of all their calamities, and so restored their city to its an- cient state. However, this must be confessed in the behalf of the Gracchi, that their undertakings were always opposed by men of the greatest influence. On the other side, those