ther-in-law, exclaimed "May all who act as
he did perish like him!" There were to be victims enough and to spare
before the bloody drama was played out. Quiet lasted for ten years, and
then, precisely when he had reached his brother's age, Caius Gracchus
came forward to avenge him, and carry the movement through another
stage. Young Caius had been left one of the commissioners of the land
law; and it is particularly noticeable that, though the author of it had
been killed, the law had survived him, being too clearly right and
politic in itself to be openly set aside. For two years the
commissioners had continued to work, and in that time forty thousand
families were settled on various parts of the _ager publicus_, which the
patricians had been compelled to resign. This was all which they could
do. The displacement of one set of inhabitants and the introduction of
another could not be accomplished without quarrels, complaints, and
perhaps some injustice. Those who entered on possession were not always
satisfied. The commissioners became unpopular. When the cries against
them became loud enough, they were suspended, and the law was then
quietly repealed. The Senate had regained its hold over the Assembly,
and had a further opportunity of showing its recovered ascendency when,
two years after the murder of Tiberius Gracchus, one of his friends
introduced a bill to make the tribunes legally re-eligible. Caius
Gracchus actively supported the change, but it had no success; and,
waiting till times had altered, and till he had arrived at an age when
he could carry weight, the young brother retired from politics, and
spent the next few years with the army in Africa and Sardinia, he served
with distinction; he made a name for himself, both as a soldier and an
administrator. Had the Senate left him alone, he might have been
satisfied with a regular career, and have risen by the ordinary steps to
the consulship. But the Senate saw in him the possibilities of a second
Tiberius; the higher his reputation, the more formidable he became to
them. They vexed him with petty prosecutions, charged him with crimes
which had no existence, and at length, by suspicion and injustice, drove
him into open war with them. Caius Gracchus had a broader intellect than
his brother, and a character considerably less noble. The land question
he perceived was but one of many questions. The true source of the
disorders of the commonwealth was the Senate itsel