[640] “I know Romans who have waited for their elevation to the consulship to begin reading the history of our ancestors and the precepts of the Greeks on military art.” (_Speech of Marius_, Sallust, _Jugurtha_, 85.) [641] Plutarch, _Tiberius Gracchus_, 8. [642] “Tiberius Gracchus genere, forma, eloquentia facile princeps.” (Florus, III. 14.) [643] Velleius Paterculus, II. 2.--Seneca the Philosopher, _De Consolatione, ad Marciam_, xvi. [644] Plutarch, _Parallel between Agis and Tiberius Gracchus_, iv. [645] “Pure and just in his views.” (Velleius Paterculus, II. 2.)--“Animated by the noblest ambition.” (Appian, _Civil Wars_, I. 9.) [646] Plutarch, _Tib. Gracchus_, 9. [647] “It was at the instigation of the rhetorician Diophanes and the philosopher Blossius that he took counsel of the citizens of Rome most distinguished for their reputation and virtues: among others, Crassus, the grand pontiff; Mucius Scævola, the celebrated lawyer, then consul; and Appius Claudius, his father-in-law.” (Plutarch, _Tib. Gracchus_, 9.) [648] Plutarch, _Tib. Gracchus_, 9. [649] Aulus Gellius relates two passages from the speech of C. Gracchus, which we think ought rather to be ascribed to Tib. Sempronius Gracchus. In one, he has stated the case of a young noble who caused a peasant to be murdered because he made a joke upon him as he passed in a litter; in the other, he told the story of a consul who ordered the most considerable men in the town of Teanum to be beaten with rods, because the consul’s wife, going to bathe, had found the baths of the town not clean. (Aulus Gellius, X. 3.) [650] Appian, _Civil Wars_, I. 12. [651] Plutarch, _Tib. Gracchus_, 16. [652] Appian, _Civil Wars_, I. 13. [653] Plutarch, _Tib. Gracchus_, 12. [654] Machiavelli, _Discourse on Titus Livius_, I. 37. [655] Plutarch, _Tib. Gracchus_, 16. [656] Appian, _Civil Wars_, I. 14. [657] Plutarch, _Tib. Gracchus_, 16, 22. [658] Plutarch, _C. Gracchus_, 5. [659] They interdicted to the magistrates deposed by the people the exercise of all functions, and authorised criminal proceedings against the magistrate who had been the author of the illegal banishment of a citizen. The first of these struck openly at Octavius, whom Tiberius had deposed; the second at Popilius, who, in his prætorship, had banished the friends of Tiberius. (Plutarch, _C. Gracchus_, 8.) [660] Appian, _Civil Wars_, I. 21. [661] “In 556, the curule ediles Fulvius Nobilior and Flaminius distributed to the people a million of _modii_ of Sicilian wheat, at two _ases_ the bushel.” (Titus Livius, XXXIII. 42.) [662] Appian, _Civil Wars_, I. 21.--Cicero, _Tusculan Disputations_, III. 20. [663] Plutarch, _C. Gracchus_, 7. According to what Polybius says, the period of service was fixed at ten years, for we read in Plutarch: “Caius Gracchus said to the censors that, obliged only by the law to ten campaigns, he had made twelve.” (Plutarch, _C. Gracchus_, 4.) [664] FIFTH PERIOD.--ROMAN COLONIES.