Tiberius and Caius Gracchus

Plutarch

Plutarch. Plutarch's Lives, Vol. X. Perrin, Bernadotte, translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1921.

Then, indeed, as we are told, he sank upon his knees, and with hands outstretched towards the goddess prayed that the Roman people, in requital for their great ingratitude and treachery, might never cease to be in servitude; for most of them were manifestly changing sides, now that proclamation of immunity had been made.

So then, as Caius fled, his foes pressed hard upon him and were overtaking him at the wooden bridge over the Tiber, but his two friends bade him go on, while they themselves withstood his pursuers, and, fighting there at the head of the bridge, would suffer no man to pass, until they were killed.

Caius had with him in his flight a single servant, by name Philocrates; and though all the spectators, as at a race, urged Caius on to greater speed, not a man came to his aid, or even consented to furnish him with a horse when he asked for one, for his pursuers were pressing close upon him. He barely succeeded in escaping into a sacred grove of the Furies, and there fell by the hand of Philocrates, who then slew himself upon his master.

According to some writers, however, both were taken alive by the enemy, and because the servant had thrown his arms about his master, no one was able to strike the master until the slave had first been dispatched by the blows of many. Someone cut off the head of Caius, we are told, and was carrying it along, but was robbed of it by a certain friend of Opimius, Septimuleius; for proclamation had been made at the beginning of the battle that an equal weight of gold would be paid the men who brought the head of Caius or Fulvius.