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Dromo's Den
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[Up] [Dromo's Den] Gaius Gracchus Biography GAIUS SEMPRONIUS GRACCHUS, younger brother of the preceding (159-121 B.C.). When Tiberius was murdered, Gaius was serving with the army in Spain under his brother-in-law, the younger Scipio Africanus. He returned to Rome a year or two later, but took no part in public affairs other than to deliver speeches in court, where his eloquence met with telling effect. Upon attaining the quaestorship (126), he went with the army, under the consul L. Aurelius Orestes, to Sardinia, then in revolt. He had a strong feeling that he should return to Rome to avenge his brother's death and take up his work, and it is said that in his dreams Tiberius' shade appeared and urged him on. Accordingly, when the Senate, to keep him longer away from Rome, extended his term as quaestor, he left Sardinia unexpectedly and went to Rome, to the discomfiture of his enemies and political opponents, who feared him and did not hesitate to resort to persecution and groundless accusations. Gaius stood for the tribuneship, and was elected in 123. He now renewed the enforcement of his brother's laws, which had gradually been allowed to lapse, and carried out important legislation-drafted in the interest of the people as opposed to that of the Senate and the nobles. To develop the resources of Italy and at the same time to employ the poor, he made new roads throughout all parts of the country, repaired old ones, and erected milestones. He had a law passed entitling every citizen who resided in Rome to grain at half price; made service in the army far less burdensome; had 6000 colonists sent out to found a colony on the site of Carthage; and aimed to diminish the power of the Senate and correspondingly to increase that of the equites (see EQUESTRIAN ORDER), especially by carrying laws which provided that jurors in trials of provincial governors for extortion should be chosen from the equites, not, as before, by the Senate, and that the gathering of the taxes of the new Province of Asia should be let out to the publicani (q.v.), who were equites. He was reelected tribune in 122, with his friend and supporter, the ex-consul Fulvius Flaccus, among his colleagues. He now proposed a measure for the extension of the Roman franchise to all the Latins, offering at the same time "Latin franchise" to all the Italian allies of Rome. The aristocratic party, finding it impossible to check his reforms by open opposition, had recourse to the trick of offering in bad faith still greater advantages through M. Livius Drusus, thus undermining Gaius's influence with the people. Events drifted into civil war. Gaius's bitter enemy, L. Opimius, became consul; Gaius failed to gain the tribuneship the third time. Gaius Gracchus and Fulvius Flaccus were now deserted by most of their supporters; they were compelled to take refuge on the Aventine Hill. Negotiations proved of no avail. Flaccus and his eldest son were murdered, and Gaius, trying in vain to escape across to the Janiculum, seeing all hope gone, ordered his slave to kill him, who then also killed himself (121) . For the careers of Tiberius and Gaius, consult their lives by Plutarch; Beesly, The Gracchi, Marius and Sulla (London, 1878); Mommsen, History of Rome, vol. iv (Eng. trans., New York, 1903-05); Meyer, Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der Gracchen (Halle, 1894); Greenidge, History of Rome, vol. i (London, 1904); Fowler, in English Historical Review (ib., 1905); Oman, Seven Roman Statesmen of the Later Republic (ib., 1902). The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. X (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 205-206. |