Few young Romans were afforded the opportunity of such close relations and intercourse with the leading men of Rome as was Tiberius Gracchus in his early years. Even in boyhood his mind seems to have been of a serious cast, more interested in study and speculation than in the pleasures customary in youth. In his father's house, which was to a large extent a common meeting place for all that was best in Roman society, he frequently heard the leading men of the city lament the disappearance from the country districts of the free citizens, and the attendant evils which seemed to be hovering over the Roman state. But what to his elders appeared lamentable principally on account of its effect upon the recruiting of the Roman legions, and consequently upon the control of Rome over her provinces and her foreign influence, was to young Tiberius an evil of a very different and more serious character. To him alone of this group did this condition appear as a great moral and social wrong--a wrong, moreover, whose effect would not be limited to the character of the soldiers in the Roman army, but which, if not remedied, would, like a cancer, eat out the very life of the Roman republic. Another difference was that those evils which brought forth from others languid, pessimistic, speculative reflections roused in Tiberius Gracchus the determination to action. Hardly was the boyhood of Tiberius over when his public life began. "Scarcely had Tiberius assumed the garb of manhood when he was elected into the college of augurs. At the banquet given to celebrate his installation, App. Claudius, the chief of the senate, offered him his daughter's hand in marriage. When the proud senator returned home, he told his wife that he had that day betrothed their daughter. 'Ah,' she cried, 'she is too young; it had been well to wait a while--unless, indeed, young Gracchus is the man.' Soon after his marriage he accompanied Scipio to Carthage, where he was the first to scale the walls. "The personal importance of Gracchus was strengthened by the marriage of Scipio with his only sister. But this marriage proved unhappy. Sempronia had no charms of person, and her temper was not good; Scipio's austere manners were little pleasing to a bride; nor were children born to form a bond of union between them." (Liddell's _History of Rome_.) A brief taste of military life was added to the experience and training of Tiberius Gracchus when he served, while a mere youth, in the capture of Carthage.