His thirtieth year was spent as a quæstor in Spain. While traveling to and from this province he was forcibly impressed by the industrial and economic conditions in Etruria. Throughout this rich and extensive territory the small freeholder seemed to have entirely disappeared, and the land was now occupied by large estates cultivated by slaves. Tiberius returned to Rome just as the so-called "slave war" in Sicily broke out. This war not only called attention to the vast number and the depths of wretchedness of the slaves already in Italy and the adjoining island, but it also served to emphasize the perilous condition of a state whose foundation rested upon such a smoldering volcano. In this servile war the slaves throughout large portions of the island of Sicily arose in a body, murdered those of their masters who were not fortunate enough to escape, and selected a Syrian juggler as their king. A Greek slave, named Achæus, proved not only a skillful commander in the field but also a capable organizer, and he soon mustered a large army containing both slaves and free laborers. Another leader, Cleon, a Sicilian slave, captured the important city of Agrigentum. The united forces defeated the Roman prætor Lucius Hypsæus, and temporarily drove the Romans out of Sicily. It was not until after three years of continued warfare, after the Romans had suffered numerous defeats and great armies had been sent under three different Roman consuls, that the rebellion in Sicily was finally put down. Upon his return from Spain, and at the breaking out of the servile war, Tiberius Gracchus had not hesitated to freely express his feelings as to the cause of the existing evils, and as to the necessary remedies for their amelioration, and it was not long before that part of the Roman people who were dissatisfied with existing conditions turned to Gracchus as the only logical leader for the reform movement. As his views on the cause of the evils and the general character of the remedies which he proposed had been shown to the people by his speeches, Tiberius was elected tribune in 134 B.C., taking office on December 10 of that year. The reforms proposed by Tiberius Gracchus in the bill presented before the comitia tributa, almost immediately after his installation as tribune, were entirely of an economic character. In the field of mere political rights nothing more remained to be asked by the lowest of the Roman citizens; their pitiable condition was the result of the existing agrarian situation. The agrarian bill proposed by Tiberius Gracchus, while a radical departure from existing conditions, was neither illegal, confiscatory, nor unjust; it merely provided for a reassumption on the part of the state of land long held illegally by the "special interests" of the place and age.