These children were born to troublous times. Rome had grown in corruption and ostentation as she had grown in wealth and dominion. When the first Punic War broke out Rome ruled only over Central and Southern Italy. When the third Punic War ended Rome was lord of all Italy, Spain, and Greece, and had wide possessions in Asia Minor and Northern Africa. Wealth had flowed abundantly into the imperial city, and with it pride, corruption, and oppression. The great grew greater, the poor poorer, and the old simplicity and frugality of Rome were replaced by overweening luxury and greed of wealth. The younger Tiberius Gracchus, who was nine years older than his brother, after taking part in the siege of Carthage, went to Spain, where also was work for a soldier. On his way thither he passed through Etruria, and saw that in the fields the old freeman farmers had disappeared, and been replaced by foreign slaves, who worked with chains upon their limbs. No Cincinnatus now ploughed his own small fields, but the land was divided up into great estates, cultivated by the captives taken in war; while the poor Romans, by whose courage these lands had been won, had not a foot of soil to call their own. This spectacle was a sore one to Tiberius, in whose mind the wise teachings of his mother had sunk deep. Here were great spaces of fertile land lying untilled, broad parks for the ostentation of their proud possessors, while thousands of Romans languished in poverty, and Rome had begun to depend for food largely upon distant realms. There was a law, more than two hundred years old, which forbade any man from holding such large tracts of land. Tiberius thought that this law should be enforced. On his return to Rome his indignant eloquence soon roused trouble in that city of rich and poor. "The wild beasts of the waste have their caves and dens," he said; "but you, the people of Rome, who have fought and bled for its growth and glory, have nothing left you but the air and the sunlight. There are far too many Romans," he continued, "who have no family altar nor ancestral tomb. They have fought well for Rome, and are falsely called the masters of the world; but the results of their fighting can only be seen in the luxury of the great, while not one of them has a clod of dirt to call his own." Cornelia urged her son to do some work to ennoble his name and benefit Rome. "I am called the 'daughter of Scipio,'" she said. "I wish to be known as 'the mother of the Gracchi.'" It was not personal glory, but the good of Rome, that the young reformer sought. He presented himself for the office of tribune, and was elected by the people, who looked upon him as their friend and advocate. And at his appeal they crowded from all quarters into the city to vote for the re-establishment of the Licinian laws,--those forbidding the rich to hold great estates.