The two Gracchi owed, no doubt, to the teaching of their mother, much of their success--if, at least, that can be called success which ended in the violent death of both of them. Cornelia was, however, a little too much addicted to making prodigies of her sons; and it is said of her, that, on one occasion, when receiving a visit from a Campanian lady, who came to display her jewels, the mother of the Gracchi, having privately sent for the children, exclaimed, as they stole gently in with their nurse, "These are my jewels: what do you think of them?" So maudlin was her maternal sensibility, that she never spoke of her sons without tears, which were always responded to by the infants themselves, with sympathetic, but uncomfortable, moisture. Nothing, however, can damp parental love; and, to a fond mother's feelings, childhood has no unpleasant features; though it is different to him who, if approaching them at all, prefers looking at them in a drier aspect. FOOTNOTES: [65] Plut., Tib. Gracch. [66] Plutarch implies that it was so; but Cicero relates anecdotes showing the fact to have been otherwise. [67] The following question and answer, uttered in a Court of Law on a modern trial, are well known:-- _Counsel._ "What do you mean by respectable?" _Witness._ "He keeps a gig." CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FOURTH. THE JUGURTHINE WAR. WAR AGAINST THE CIMBRI AND TEUTONI. While Rome had been making the numerous conquests already described, self-conquest--the most important conquest of all--had been altogether lost sight of, and she had failed in obtaining the victory over her own vices. Though she possessed, nominally, a constituted body of rulers, money was actually the governing power; and so debasing is its influence, that it is more fatal to the liberty of a people to be ruled with a rod of gold, than with a rod of iron. No consideration but pecuniary consideration had any weight, corruption presided in the courts of law, the people were bought by the Senate, and the Senate sold the people. In the army there was a system of shameless plunder on the part of the commanders, and the soldiers followed their leaders with avidity. Numidia had, since the death of Masinissa, been ruled over by his son Micipsa, who, by his will, put his kingdom, as it were, into commission, by giving it to his two sons, Hiempsal and Adherbal, conjointly with a lad whom he had adopted, and whose name was Jugurtha. Jugurtha was a person of excellent manners and genteel address, an excellent horseman, the first to strike the lion[68] in the field, and himself a lion much run after in society.