Tiberius and Caius Gracchus

So Septimuleius stuck the head of Cams on a spear and brought it to Opimius, and when it was placed in a balance it weighed seventeen pounds and two thirds, since Septimuleius, besides showing himself to be a scoundrel, had also perpetrated a fraud; for he had taken out the brain and poured melted lead in its place. But those who brought the head of Fulvius were of the obscurer sort, and therefore got nothing.

The bodies of Caius and Fulvius and of the other slain were thrown into the Tiber, and they numbered three thousand; their property was sold and the proceeds paid into the public treasury. Moreover, their wives were forbidden to go into mourning, and Licinia, the wife of Caius, was also deprived of her marriage portion. Most cruel of all, however, was the treatment of the younger son of Fulvius, who had neither lifted a hand against the nobles nor been present at the fighting, but had come to effect a truce before the battle and had been arrested; after the battle he was slain.

However, what vexed the people more than this or anything else was the erection of a temple of Concord by Opimius[*](Opimus restored the temple of Concord which had been built by Camillus (see the Camillus, xlii. 4.)); for it was felt that he was priding himself and exulting and in a manner celebrating a triumph in view of all this slaughter of citizens. Therefore at night, beneath the inscription on the temple, somebody carved this verse:— A work of mad discord produces a temple of Concord.

And yet this Opimius, who was the first consul to exercise the power of a dictator, and put to death without trial, besides three thousand other citizens, Caius Gracchus and Fulvius Flaccus, of whom one had been consul and had celebrated a triumph, while the other was the foremost man of his generation in virtue and reputation—this Opimius could not keep his hands from fraud, but when he was sent as ambassador to Jugurtha the Numidian was bribed by him, and after being convicted most shamefully of corruption, he spent his old age in infamy, hated and abused by the people,

a people which was humble and cowed at the time when the Gracchi fell, but soon afterwards showed how much it missed them and longed for them. For it had statues of the brothers made and set up in a conspicuous place, consecrated the places where they were slain, and brought thither offerings of all the first-fruits of the seasons, nay, more, many sacrificed and fell down before their statues every day, as though they were visiting the shrines of gods.

And further, Cornelia is reported to have borne all her misfortunes in a noble and magnanimous spirit, and to have said of the sacred places where her sons had been slain that they were tombs worthy of the dead which occupied them. She resided on the promontory called Misenum, and made no change in her customary way of living.