uted at the moment even by well-meaning men; but the fact that
Gaius Gracchus did not seriously recur to those possessions which
might have been, and yet were not, distributed under the law of his
brother, tells very much in favour of the belief that Scipio hit
substantially the right moment. Both measures were extorted from
the parties--the first from the aristocracy, the second from the
friends of reform; for each its author paid with his life. It was
Scipio's lot to fight for his country on many a battle-field and to
return home uninjured, that he might perish there by the hand of an
assassin; but in his quiet chamber he no less died for Rome than if
he had fallen before the walls of Carthage.

Democratic Agitation under Carbo and Flaccus

The distribution of land was at an end; the revolution went on.
The revolutionary party, which possessed in the allotment-commission
as it were a constituted leadership, had even in the lifetime of Scipio
skirmished now and then with the existing government. Carbo, in
particular, one of the most distinguished men of his time in oratorical
talent, had as tribune of the people in 623 given no small trouble to
the senate; had carried voting by ballot in the burgess-assemblies, so
far as it had not been introduced already;(5) and had even made the
significant proposal to leave the tribunes of the people free to
reappear as candidates for the same office in the year immediately
following, and thus legally to remove the obstacle by which Tiberius
Gracchus had primarily been thwarted. The scheme had been at that
time frustrated by the resistance of Scipio; some years later,
apparently after his death, the law was reintroduced and carried
through, although with limiting clauses.(6) The principal object
of the party, however, was to revive the action of the allotment-
commission which had been practically suspended; the leaders seriously
talked of removing the obstacles which the Italian allies interposed
to the scheme by conferring on them the rights of citizenship, and the
agitation assumed mainly that direction. In order to meet it, the
senate in 628 got the tribune of the people Marcus Junius Pennus to
propose the dismissal of all non-burgesses from the capital, and
in spite of the resistance of the democrats, particularly of Gaius
Gracchus, and of the ferment occasioned by this odious measure in the
Latin communities, the proposal was carried. Marcus Fulvius Flaccus
retorted in