It is outside the purpose of this work to go into the details of the butchery of the next day in which Gaius Gracchus, Fulvius Flaccus, and three thousand of their supporters lost their lives. The charge that Gaius Gracchus had planned to do what Julius Cæsar was to do in the next century, make himself dictator, or emperor, of Rome, is best disproved by the absolute lack of any military preparations on the part of Gracchus, even to the extent of securing his own safety when he knew his life was in constant danger. Although the friends of Gracchus and Flaccus had gathered together to protect their leaders, they were without either proper arms or any system of military organization, and were cut down, almost without resistance, by the armed forces which had been collected by the consul, Opimius. Mention might be made of the fruitless heroism displayed by some of those friends of Gaius Gracchus who remained true to him to the last; but the flashes of brightness were few, and the day must ever be recorded as one of the darkest in all Roman history. It was this day that marked the final failure of the last movement which might have saved and rejuvenated the great Roman republic; it was this day that showed the right of manhood was no longer the highest right in Rome, and that the rule of special and vested interests was now supreme. The singleness of purpose and openness of character in Tiberius Gracchus leave no opening for speculation or doubt as to the motives from which he acted or the objects which he sought. Both the character and the actions of Gaius Gracchus are more complex than those of his brother, and many historians have doubted the disinterestedness of his agitation for popular rights. The final summaries upon the character of this man, of two recent historians, are as follows: "The man who originates is always so far greater than the man who imitates, and Caius only followed where his brother led. The very dream which Caius told to the people shows that his brother's spell was still on him, and his telling it, together with his impetuous oratory and his avowed fatalism, militates against the theory that Tiberius was swayed by impulse and sentiment, and he by calculation and reason. But no doubt he profited by experience of the past. He had learned how to bide his time, and to think generosity wasted on the murderous crew whom he had sworn to punish. Pure in life, perfectly prepared for a death to which he considered himself foredoomed, glowing with one fervent passion, he took up his brother's cause with a double portion of his brother's spirit, because he had thought more before action, because he had greater natural eloquence, and because being forewarned he was forearmed.