The American Encyclopedia of History, Biography and Travel: Comprising Ancient and Modern History: the Biography of Eminent Men of Europe and America, and the Lives of Distinguished Travelers.Prescott, Thomas H.
History
The American Encyclopedia of History, Biography and Travel: Comprising Ancient and Modern History: the Biography of Eminent Men of Europe and America, and the Lives of Distinguished Travelers.
Prescott, Thomas H.
Biography; World history
did not cease until, in spite of the most obstinate resistance on the
part of the senators, who used as their instrument against him one of
his own colleagues in the tribuneship, he had gained his end. Three
commissioners were appointed to superintend the execution of the
law――Tiberius himself, his father-in-law Appius Claudius, and his
younger brother Caius. Loud and deep were the vows of vengeance on the
part of the senators; and Tiberius saw that his only chance of life
lay in being reelected to the tribuneship, the dignity of which was an
inviolable protection. To prevent this, the senatorial party mustered
all their strength; and a tumult ensuing on one of the days of
election, Tiberius, along with about 300 of his followers, was killed.
For about ten years the excitement caused by the law of Gracchus
continued, Fulvius Flaccus and Papirius Carbo acting as his successors
in the popular interest, and carrying on the struggle against the
nobles, who raised up obstacles to the execution of the law. But in
the year B. C. 123, Caius Gracchus, who now felt himself old enough to
assume the career which his brother had left him as an inheritance,
claimed and obtained the tribuneship. Caius was a man of more vehement
character and more comprehensive views than his brother, and the
schemes which he proposed embraced a great variety of points, besides
a reënactment of his brother’s agrarian law. In fact, a reformer by
reputation and education, he made it his business to find out abuses,
and either declaim against them or propose remedies for them. Perhaps
the most objectionable of his measures was a law enacting a monthly
distribution of corn among the city population at a nominal price――a
poor-law, for such it may be called, which had the effect of
attracting all the paupers of Italy to Rome. A more valuable measure
was his transference of the judicial power from the senators, who had
hitherto held it, and who had been guilty of great corruption in the
exercise of it, to the _equites_, or wealthy capitalists, intermediate
between the senators and the poorer classes of the community. He also
proposed and carried the establishment or various colonies in
different parts of the empire, which afforded room for enterprise,
thus relieving Rome of part of its overgrown population. More
fortunate so far than his brother, he held the tribuneship for two
years, and thus had time for more extensive action. Deserted, however,
by the people at the end of the second year, in consequence of the
policy of his opponents, who adopted the plan of outbidding him for
popular favor, he lost his office. The senators, having him at their
mercy, spared no means of revenge; and Gracchus, and his friend
Fulvius Flaccus, having recourse to the armed assistance of their
supporters to preserve their lives when they appeared in public, this
was construed into a design of sedition. The consul was empowered to
resort to force against them; a terrible fray occurred in one of the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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