many leagues, the citizens might assemble and the _tribus rusticæ_ be represented, if not fully, at least in considerable numbers: but now that the Roman peasantry lived so far away, especially, for instance, after the assignments of Flaminius in the Romagna, they were no more able to come to town and vote; and the form of the law, which was suitable to the former size of the city, was now thoroughly preposterous and mischievous. On the following day, the elections were to go on, and people now met together with a gloomy foreboding that blood would be shed. Gracchus came only lightly armed. The senate was assembled in the temple of _Fides_. The votes were about to be given, when a tumult arose. The senate being near, at the news that there was an uproar among the people, Scipio Nasica called upon the consul Mucius Scævola to take strong measures. The latter appears in a doubtful light: according to most of the accounts, he seems to have been favourable to Gracchus; according to others, just the reverse; but if we suppose him to have been a weak-minded man who stood in fear of his faction, this contradiction may be accounted for. Nasica, seeing that a bold stroke would decide the matter, called upon all the senators to follow him; and they all, to a man, while leaving the temple, declared Gracchus a traitor. The people fell back before men of such high rank, and the senators seized hold of everything that might serve as a weapon. There seem to have been scaffoldings erected all round (even now-a-days in Italy, wherever there is anything to be seen, benches are placed); part of these were broken in pieces. The report had been spread, that Gracchus had appeared with a diadem, and that he wanted to have himself proclaimed king: the senators, with the exception of some blockheads who would believe anything, well knew the whole to be a lie; but the people, who could not tell their own mind, and had no leader, many of them dispersed. The senators laid hold of the broken pieces of timber, and made an onset against the few unarmed men that were still gathering round Tiberius Gracchus, who, on their side, did not dare so much as to lift up a hand against the senators. Tiberius fled down the _centum gradus_ to the Velabrum; and there his foot slipped, one of his pursuers--according to some, one of the common people; according to others, a senator, or a colleague of Gracchus (there were persons who afterwards disputed for the honour)--having pulled him by the toga: this man struck him on the head with a bit of wood, and when he fell down stunned, the murder was completed. Many of his followers shared the same fate, and their dead bodies were thrown into the Tiber: the carcase of the great man himself, having been washed ashore, was left to rot in the fields. He was not even yet thirty years old when he died. A great number were also arrested as accomplices. But the real persecution only began in the following year, under the consul P.