The tribuneship of the people had quite changed character; the tribune holding arbitrary sway just like any tyrant. A tribune (C. Atinius Labeo), a few years after Gracchus, wanted to have the censor Metellus thrown from the Tarpeian rock for having excluded him from the senate; and it was only with difficulty that his family succeeded in getting another tribune to intercede for him. Such instances are not unseldom met with, as the tribunes themselves no longer knew what their office meant. It was very likely the same Atinius, who brought in the law that the tribunes were _eo ipso_ senators, and could only be excluded by the same rules as other senators. TIBERIUS SEMPRONIUS GRACCHUS. There was a time when the name of the Gracchi was cried down, when they were looked upon as the leaders of a tyrannical onslaught upon the property of others; and there was another time, when they had a renown which would have certainly been most hateful to themselves. Both of these opinions are now entirely exploded; and, although the complicated system of the _ager publicus_ is not yet understood everywhere, still I do not believe that any one in Germany--unless indeed it be in some corner of Austria--holds the old views with regard to the Gracchi. The French still cling a little to their false prejudices; but in America my account of the matter is already the one generally received, as a reviewer of my history in a North American periodical has especially pointed out. Tiberius Gracchus was the son of Tiberius Gracchus the elder who had made the peace with the Celtiberians, and of Cornelia, the daughter of the first Scipio Africanus, who was given in marriage to her husband, not, as Livy says, by her father, but, after his death, by her family: both of these were, even in the midst of the thorough corruption of that age, acknowledged to have been people of the highest virtue, in whom the olden times were living again. Of their many children, few only remained alive--in fact, out of twelve not more than three, namely the two brothers, Tiberius and Caius, and the daughter, who was married to the younger Scipio (_Paulli fil._). The sons were brought up under the eye of the mother by distinguished Greeks, and by a Campanian, C. Blossius, who was a perfect Grecian, writing Greek, and even composing poetry in Greek: he was, as we now know, the author of Rhintonian comedies,[64] a proof of the flourishing state of Greek literature at that time in Italy, of which Cicero also informs us. He was the teacher and friend of Tiberius of whom he was somewhat the elder, and a follower of Stoic philosophy, a system which in those days was congenial to the aspirations of all generous minds, and was particularly welcome to a nation like the Romans. When Tiberius, owing to the great favour which he had with the people, had been raised step by step to honours, and he had gained glory already at Carthage, where with C.