s. Certainly it was an act
in accordance with the spirit of the age to remove the memorials of
the old, and to inaugurate a new, concord over the remains of the three
grandsons of the conqueror of Zama, all of whom--first Tiberius
Gracchus, then Scipio Aemilianus, and lastly the youngest and the
mightiest, Gaius Gracchus--had now been engulfed by the revolution.
The memory of the Gracchi remained officially proscribed; Cornelia was
not allowed even to put on mourning for the death of her last son;
but the passionate attachment, which very many had felt towards the two
noble brothers and especially towards Gaius during their life, was
touchingly displayed also after their death in the almost religious
veneration which the multitude, in spite of all precautions of
police, continued to pay to their memory and to the spots where
they had fallen.

CHAPTER IV

The Rule of the Restoration

Vacancy in the Government

The new structure, which Gaius Gracchus had reared, became on
his death a ruin. His death indeed, like that of his brother, was
primarily a mere act of vengeance; but it was at the same time a very
material step towards the restoration of the old constitution, when
the person of the monarch was taken away from the monarchy, just as
it was on the point of being established. It was all the more so in
the present instance, because after the fall of Gaius and the sweeping
and bloody prosecutions of Opimius there existed at the moment
absolutely no one, who, either by blood-relationship to the fallen
chief of the state or by preeminent ability, might feel himself
warranted in even attempting to occupy the vacant place. Gaius
had departed from the world childless, and the son whom Tiberius
had left behind him died before reaching manhood; the whole popular
party, as it was called, was literally without any one who could be
named as leader. The Gracchan constitution resembled a fortress
without a commander; the walls and garrison were uninjured, but
the general was wanting, and there was no one to take possession of
the vacant place save the very government which had been overthrown.

The Restored Aristocracy

So it accordingly happened. After the decease of Gaius Gracchus
without heirs, the government of the senate as it were spontaneously
resumed its place; and this was the more natural, that it had not
been, in the strict sense, formally abolished by the tribune, but
had merely been reduced to a practica