The tribunates of the two Gracchi[5] at the end of the period which we have been considering begin the century-long revolution which ultimately overthrew the oligarchy and brought in the empire. The attention of Tiberius Gracchus was called to the gradual disappearance of the peasant proprietor from Italy, to the abnormal growth of the city at the expense of the country, and to the crushing out of the middle class. He and his brother set themselves to work to remedy this situation by limiting the size of landed estates, by assigning state lands to homesteaders, and by drafting off the city’s proletariat to colonies in Italy and abroad. In these plans Tiberius met the violent opposition of the senate, but carried his measures through in a popular assembly in spite of the senate’s efforts. By this action, and by securing “the recall” of a hostile tribune, he struck a fatal blow at the prestige of the senate, which had controlled legislation for a century and a half. Ten years later by securing the passage in the popular assembly of one bill to supply grain to the poor of Rome at a price lower than the market rate, of another imposing a penalty on a magistrate who carried out the final decree of the senate suspending certain constitutional guarantees, and of a third which dealt with the taxes in Asia, Gaius, the brother of Tiberius, vindicated the claim of the popular assembly to be the controlling factor in legislation on domestic and foreign affairs. The political history of Rome for the next century is a continuation of this life-and-death struggle between the nobility and the democracy, with one and the other contestant alternately in the ascendant. The development of the empire and the need of a standing army to carry on wars abroad and maintain order, in the end, gave a decisive turn to the struggle.