Page:The Children's Plutarch, Romans.djvu/169

 ask a soothsayer to tell the meaning the strange sign?” A soothsayer was fetched. He looked at the wriggling creatures, and, pointing to one and then the other, said:

“If you kill this one, you will soon die. If you kill that one, your wife will die.”

The Roman reflected a moment. Then he killed the first one, and the second escaped. And soon afterward (so says the old legend) he died. He loved his wife Cordelia more than he loved his own life.

The good Roman's name was Gracchus (Grak-kus), and his two sons were called the Gracchi. One was Tiberius (Ty-beer-ius), born in 168 or 163, killed 133 , and the other Caius (Ky-us), born about 154, killed 121 They died some twenty or thirty years before Julius Cæsar was born. I will tell you a little about each.

He was elected tribune, or the people's man. Any one of the tribunes could stand up in the senate when a law was about to be passed, and cry “Veto!”—“I say no!”—and the law had to drop. Tiberius was a friend of the poorer Romans—the plebs, or commons. In early times, when land was taken from the foes of the republic,