Tiberius and Caius Gracchus

Therefore it is not just that a tribune who wrongs the people should retain that inviolable character which is given him for service to the people, since he is destroying the very power which is the source of his own power. And surely, if it is right for him to be made tribune by a majority of the votes of the tribes, it must be even more right for him to be deprived of his tribuneship by a unanimous vote.

And again, nothing is so sacred and inviolate as objects consecrated to the gods; and yet no one has hindered the people from using such objects, or moving them, or changing their position in such manner as may be desired. It is therefore permissible for the people to transfer the tribunate also, as a consecrated thing, from one man to another. And that the office is not inviolable or irremovable is plain from the fact that many times men holding it resign it under oath of disability, and of their own accord beg to be relieved of it.

Such were the chief points in the justification of his course which Tiberius made. And now his friends, observing the threats and the hostile combination against him, thought that he ought to be made tribune again for the following year. Once more, therefore, Tiberius sought to win the favour of the multitude by fresh laws, reducing the time of military service, granting appeal to the people from the verdicts of the judges, adding to the judges, who at that time were composed of senators only, an equal number from the equestrian order,

and in every way at length trying to maim the power of the senate from motives of anger and contentiousness rather than from calculations of justice and the public good. And when, as the voting was going on, the friends of Tiberius perceived that their opponents were getting the better of the contest, since all the people were not present, in the first place they resorted to abuse of his fellow tribunes, and so protracted the time; next, they dismissed the assembly, and ordered that it should convene on the following day.

Then Tiberius, going down into the forum, at first supplicated the citizens in a humble manner and with tears in his eyes; next, he declared he was afraid that his enemies would break into his house by night and kill him, and thereby so wrought upon his hearers that great numbers of them took up their station about his house and spent the night there on guard.