There was another enemy within the gates beside depopulation, one not less to be feared, but less easy to realise as an enemy; I mean slave-labour. Gracchus may be pardoned for making no direct attempt to attack it, though just before his tribunate there had been a rising of slaves in Sicily which showed the military as well as the economic danger of the situation. It is said that 200,000 slaves were in rebellion there at one time, and the war was only ended after a long struggle. These risings, more of which followed at intervals, and finally a most formidable one in Italy sixty years later, were symptoms of a disease calling for a very skilful physician; but no physician was to be found until Cæsar tried to make a beginning. As yet the Romans had not had time to realise this danger; living in an atmosphere of slave-labour, they believed that they throve on it. And as this was in one sense true, owing to the decrease of the free labouring population, the evil was too subtle for an uncritical people to discern. In spite of all these dangerous risings, there is no sign in the copious literature of this last century of the Republic of any consciousness of the poison at work. Nine years after the murder of Tiberius Gracchus, his younger brother Gaius, elected tribune, took up his work and went far beyond his designs. In this most interesting and able man we come at last upon a Roman statesman of the highest order; a practical man, no mere idealist of the new Greek school, and yet a man of genius and a born leader of men. We possess a picture of him, evidently drawn from the life by one who knew him, which shows these gifts at a glance.[9] When he was at the height of his activity, busy with a multitude of details, he seems to have given that eyewitness the impression that he was almost a monarch. But a close study of all we are told about him seems to prove that he was in reality one of those rare men, like Cæsar later on, who profoundly believe that they can do the work needed by the State better than any other man, and who are justified in that belief. He would see to the carrying out of his own measures with astonishing speed, sparing no pains, amazing even his enemies by the unflagging energy with which he worked, and by the way he contrived to get work out of others. Perhaps the secret was that he was a gentleman in the best and noblest sense of that word; for Plutarch says that in his dealings with men he was _always_ _dignified, yet always courteous_, invariably giving to every man his due.