)

3. (Par.) Gracchus proposed certain laws for the benefit of those of
the people who served in the army, and transferred the courts from
the senate to the knights, bedeviling and disturbing all established
customs in order that he might be enabled to lay hold on safety in
some wise. And after he found not even this of advantage to him, but
his term of office was drawing to a close, when he would be
immediately exposed to the attacks of his enemies, he attempted to
secure the tribuneship also for the following year (in company with
his brother) and to appoint his father-in-law consul: to obtain this
end he would make any statement or promise anything whatever to
anybody. Often, too, he put on a mourning garb and brought his mother
and children, tied hand and foot, into the presence of the populace.
(Valesius, ib.)

[Sidenote: FRAG. LXXXIII] [Sidenote: B.C. 129 (_a.u._ 625)] (Par.)
Scipio Africanus had more ambition in his makeup than was suitable for
or compatible with his general excellence. And in reality none of his
rivals took pleasure in his death, but although they thought him a
great obstacle in their way even they missed him. They saw that he was
valuable to the State and never expected that he would cause them any
serious trouble. When he was suddenly taken away all the possessions
of the powerful class were again diminished, so that the promoters of
agrarian legislation ravaged at will practically all of Italy. And
this seems to me to have been most strongly indicated by the mass of
stones that poured down from heaven, falling upon some of the temples
and killing men, and by the tears of Apollo. [Sidenote: B.C. 131
(_a.u._ 623)] For the god wept copiously[47] for three days, so that
the Romans on the advice of the soothsayers voted to cut down the
statue and to sink it in the deep. (Valesius, p. 625.)

[Footnote 47: In the original the word "wept" is repeated. Van
Herwerden thinks that the second one should be deleted, but Schenkl
prefers to substitute an adverb in place of the first. In the
translation I have used an adverb giving nearly the same force as the
repetition of the verb.]

_(BOOK 25, BOISSEVAIN.)_

[Sidenote: FRAG. LXXXIV] (Par.) Gracchus had a disposition like his
brother; only the latter drifted from excellence into ambition and then
to baseness whereas this man was naturally intractable and played the
rogue voluntarily and far surpassed the other in his gift of language.
For these rea