r lost his prestige and influence when he
made his 7th of March speech--the fate of all great men, however great,
when they oppose popular feelings and interests, whether they are right or
wrong. Scipio, the hero of three wars, not only lost his popularity, but
his life. He was found murdered in his bed at the age of fifty-six.
"Scipio's assassination was the democratic reply to the aristocratic
massacre of Tiberius Gracchus." The greatest general of the age, a man of
unspotted moral purity, and political unselfishness, and generous
patriotism, could not escape the vengeance of a baffled populace, B.C.
129.

(M946) The distribution of land ceased, but the revolution did not stop.
The soul of Tiberius Gracchus "was marching on." A new hero appeared in
his brother, Gaius Gracchus, nine years younger--a man who had no relish
for vulgar pleasures,--brave, cultivated, talented, energetic, vehement. A
master of eloquence, he drew the people; consumed with a passion for
revenge, he led them on to revolutionary measures. He was elected tribune
in the year 123, and at once declared war on the aristocratic party, to
which by birth he belonged.

He inaugurated revolutionary measures, by proposing to the people a law
which should allow the tribune to solicit a re-election. He then, to gain
the people and secure material power, enacted that every burgess should be
allowed, monthly, a definite quantity of corn from the public stores at
about half the average price. And he caused a law to be passed that the
existing order of voting in the Comitia Centuriata, according to which the
five property classes voted first, should be done away with, and that all
the centuries should vote in the order to be determined by lot. He also
caused a law to be passed that no citizen should enlist in the army till
seventeen, nor be compelled to serve in the army more than twenty years.
These measures all had the effect to elevate the democracy.

(M947) He also sought to depress the aristocracy, by dividing its ranks.
The old aristocracy embraced chiefly the governing class, and were the
chief possessors of landed property. But a new aristocracy of the rich had
grown up, composed of speculators, who managed the mercantile transactions
of the Roman world. The old senatorial aristocracy were debarred by the
Claudian ordinance from mercantile pursuits, and were merely sleeping
partners in the great companies, managed by the speculators. But the new
aristo