ember, B.C. 121, Gracchus
ceased to be tribune of the people. On the 1st of January, B.C. 120,
Opimius entered upon his office.

The first attack, as was fair, was directed against the most useful and
the most unpopular measure of Gracchus, the reestablishment of Carthage,
while the transmarine colonies had hitherto been only indirectly
assailed through the greater allurements of the Italian. African hyenas,
it was now alleged, dug up the newly placed boundary stones of Carthage,
and the Roman priests when requested certified that such signs and
portents ought to form an express warning against rebuilding on a site
accursed by the gods. The senate thereby found itself in its conscience
compelled to have a law proposed which prohibited the planting of the
colony of Sunonia. Gracchus, who with the other men nominated to
establish it was just then selecting the colonists, appeared on the day
of voting at the Capitol, whither the burgesses were convoked, with a
view to procure by means of his adherents the rejection of the law.

He wished to shun acts of violence that he might not himself supply his
opponents with the pretext which they sought, but he had not been able
to prevent a great portion of his faithful partisans--who remembered the
catastrophe of Tiberius, and were well acquainted with the designs of
the aristocracy--from appearing in arms, fearing that, amid the immense
excitement on both sides, quarrels could hardly be avoided. The consul
Lucius Opimius offered the usual sacrifice in the porch of the
Capitoline temple, one of the attendants assisting at the ceremony.
Quintus Antullius, with the holy entrails in his hands, haughtily
ordered the "bad citizens" to quit the porch, and seemed as though he
would lay hands on Caius himself; whereupon a zealous Gracchan drew his
sword and cut the man down. A fearful tumult arose. Gracchus vainly
sought to address the people and to disclaim the responsibility for the
sacreligious murder; he only furnished his antagonists with a further
formal ground of accusation, as, without being aware of it in the
confusion, he interrupted a tribune in the act of speaking to the
people--an offence for which an obsolete statute, originating at the
time of the old dissensions between the orders (I. 353), had prescribed
the severest penalty. The consul Lucius Opimius took his measures to put
down by force of arms the insurrection for the overthrow of the
republican constitution, as they