Tiberius and Caius Gracchus

But the strongest proof that Livius was well disposed towards the people and honest, lay in the fact that he never appeared to propose anything for himself or in his own interests. For he moved to send out other men as managers of his colonies, and would have no hand in the expenditure of moneys, whereas Caius had assigned to himself most of such functions and the most important of them.

And now Rubrius, one of his colleagues in the tribuneship, brought in a bill for the founding of a colony on the site of Carthage, which had been destroyed by Scipio, and Caius, upon whom the lot fell, sailed off to Africa as superintendent of the foundation. In his absence, therefore, Livius made all the more headway against him, stealing into the good graces of the people and attaching them to himself, particularly by his calumniations of Fulvius.

This Fulvius was a friend of Caius, and had been chosen a commissioner with him for the distribution of the public land; but he was a turbulent fellow, and was hated outright by the senators. Other men also suspected him of stirring up trouble with the allies and of secretly inciting the Italians to revolt. These things were said against him without proof or investigation, but Fulvius himself brought them into greater credence by a policy which was unsound and revolutionary.

This more than anything else was the undoing of Caius, who came in for a share of the hatred against Fulvius. And when Scipio Africanus died without any apparent cause, and certain marks of violence and blows were thought to be in evidence all over his dead body, as I have written in his Life,[*](See the Tiberius Gracchus, ad fin., and cf. the Romulus, xxvii. 4. f. ) most of the consequent calumny fell upon Fulvius, who was Scipio’s enemy, and had abused him that day from the rostra, but suspicion attached itself also to Caius.

And a deed so monstrous, and perpetrated upon a man who was the foremost and greatest Roman, went unpunished, nay, was not even so much as probed; for the multitude were opposed to any judicial enquiry and thwarted it, because they feared that Caius might be implicated in the charge if the murder were investigated. However, this had happened at an earlier time.[*](In 129 B.C., six years before Caius became tribune.)