Enough was said in the last chapter to show that the age we are now coming to, the last century before Christ, was one full of great issues—not only for Rome, but for all western civilisation. The perils threatening, both internal and external, were so real as to call for statesmen and soldiers of the highest quality; and as we shall see, this call was answered. It was this century that produced most of the famous Romans whose names are familiar to us: the two Gracchi, Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Cicero, Cæsar, and finally Augustus, all of whom helped in various ways to save Italy and the Empire from premature dissolution. It was, in fact, an age of great personalities, and one, too, in which personal character became as deeply interesting to the men of the time as it is even now to us. For as the disciplinary force of the State waned, the individual was left freer to make his own force felt; and so great was that force at times, that we are tempted to fix our attention on the man, and to forget the complicated motives and interests of the world in which he was acting. Undoubtedly we should be wrong in doing so; for a very small acquaintance with the facts would show us these great men struggling incessantly with difficulties, and carried out of their own natural course by adverse currents. But none the less it is true that hardly any other period of history shows so much, for good and evil alike, depending on individual character. So as the last chapter dealt mainly with perils and problems, our next two will be occupied with the efforts of these famous men to meet the perils and solve the problems. Depopulation and the decline of agriculture were the first of the perils to be considered seriously. This was done in the year 133 B.C., not by the Senate, whose business it really was, but by a young and enthusiastic noble, in some ways one of the finest characters in Roman history. Tiberius Gracchus had the right instinct of the old Roman for duty, and for a Roman he had an unusually tender and generous nature; but he had not the experience and knowledge necessary for one who would take this difficult problem in hand, which in our day would be prepared for legislation by careful inquiry about facts, conducted by authorised experts. His education had been mainly Greek, and a study of hard facts did not form a part of it.