With such thoughts as these moving in his mind he turned in loathing from the life of the young Roman noble of his own age and class. He had no use for personal luxury; wine and fine clothes and a gorgeous house in which to live a life of ease and idleness--these things were nothing to him. While serving abroad in Spain, Sardinia, and elsewhere, he shared the hardships of his soldiers, and spent his own money in the effort to make their hard lot less severe. Such leisure as he had was occupied in reading. In this way he disciplined and fortified his mind. Moreover, Caius had before him a fixed purpose, a clearly determined work in life. For that he was preparing. One of his weapons was to be the art of speech. He studied, therefore, particularly the works of the great Greek orators. He wanted to learn, and he did learn, how to use words to persuade men and impel them to action. He made himself one of the greatest orators Rome knew. His speeches are lost, but accounts of them remain, and they tell how Caius could set his hearers on fire, stir them to tears or anger. [Illustration: ELABORATE LAMP to show the luxury of later times] When, nine years after Tiberius’s death, Caius Gracchus came back to Rome (124), he found that men were waiting eagerly for him. Tiberius had not been forgotten. The poor hoped, the rich feared that Caius had come as his avenger. When he stood for the tribuneship the party in the Senate that had thwarted and finally murdered Tiberius strained every nerve to prevent Caius’s election. They did not wait to hear what his plans were. They knew that he belonged to the men of the new generation who wanted far-reaching changes, and they believed that any change must be at their expense. They at once began attacking Caius. They accused him of coming home before his time of service abroad was up. They even declared that he, the most scrupulously honest and disinterested of men, had made more money than he ought to have done from the various posts he had held. Caius turned on them. He had already served twelve years in the army. As for making money: ‘I am the only man who went out with a full purse and returned with an empty one. Others took out casks of wine for themselves, and when they had emptied them brought the casks back filled with gold and silver.’ He lived not in the rich quarter of Rome among the high-born and wealthy, but among the poor near the Forum. He was elected tribune by an overwhelming majority and at once set to work.