ould bring the head of Gracchus or
of Flaccus its literal weight in gold; and that they would guarantee
complete indemnity to everyone who should leave the Aventine before the
beginning of the conflict. The ranks on the Aventine speedily thinned;
the valiant nobility in conjunction with the Cretans and the slaves
stormed the almost undefended mount, and killed all whom they
found--about two hundred and fifty persons, mostly of humble rank.
Marcus Flaccus fled with his eldest son to a place of concealment, where
they were soon afterward hunted out and put to death. Gracchus had at
the beginning of the conflict retired into the temple of Minerva and was
there about to pierce himself with his sword when his friend Publius
Laetorius seized his arm and besought him to preserve himself, if
possible, for better times.

Gracchus was induced to make an attempt to escape to the other bank of
the Tiber, but when hastening down the hill he fell and sprained his
foot. To gain time for him to escape, his two attendants turned, and
facing his pursuers allowed themselves to be cut down. As Marcus
Pomponius at the Porta Trigemina under the Aventine; Publius Laetorius
at the bridge over the Tiber--where Horatius Cocles was said to have
once withstood, singly, the Etruscan army--so Gracchus, attended only by
his slave Euporus, reached the suburb on the right bank of the Tiber.

There, in the grove of Furrina, afterward were found the two dead
bodies. It seemed as if the slave had put to death first his master, and
then himself. The heads of the two fallen leaders were handed over to
the Government as required. The stipulated price, and more, was paid to
Lucius Septumuleius, a man of quality, the bearer of the head of
Gracchus; while the murderers of Flaccus, persons of humble rank, were
sent away with empty hands. The bodies of the dead were thrown into the
river, and the houses of the leaders were abandoned to the pillage of
the multitude. The warfare of prosecution against the partisans of
Gracchus began on the grandest scale; as many as three thousand of them
are said to have been strangled in prison, among whom was Quintus
Flaccus, eighteen years of age, who had taken no part in the conflict,
and was universally lamented on account of his youth and his amiable
disposition. On the open space beneath the Capitol, where the altar
consecrated by Camillus after the restoration of internal peace (I.
382), and other shrines--erected on simi