Tiberius and Caius Gracchus

However, all the property captured in the camp was retained by the Numantines and treated as plunder. Among this were also the ledgers of Tiberius, containing written accounts of his official expenses as quaestor. These he was very anxious to recover, and so, when the army was already well on its way, turned back towards the city, attended by three or four companions.

After summoning forth the magistrates of Numantia, he asked them to bring him his tablets, that he might not give his enemies opportunity to malign him by not being able to give an account of his administration. The Numantines, accordingly, delighted at the chance to do him a favour, invited him to enter the city; and as he stood deliberating the matter, they drew near and clasped his hands, and fervently entreated him no longer to regard them as enemies, but to treat and trust them as friends.

Tiberius, accordingly, decided to do this, both because he set great store by his tablets, and because he feared to exasperate the Numantines by showing them distrust. After he had entered the city, in the first place the Numantines set out a meal for him, and entreated him by all means to sit down and eat something in their company; next, they gave him back his tablets, and urged him to take whatever he wanted of the rest of his property. He took nothing, however, except the frankincense which he was wont to use in the public sacrifices, and after bidding them farewell with every expression of friendship, departed.

When he came back to Rome, the whole transaction was blamed and denounced as a terrible disgrace to the city, although the relatives and friends of the soldiers, who formed a large part of the people, came flocking to Tiberius, imputing the disgrace in what had happened to his commander, but insisting that it was due to Tiberius that the lives of so many citizens had been saved.

Those, however, who were displeased at what had been done urged for imitation the example of their ancestors, who flung to the enemy unarmed the generals themselves who had been satisfied to be let go by the Samnites, and in like manner cast forth those who had taken hand and share in the treaty, as for instance the quaestors and military tribunes, turning upon their heads the guilt of perjury and violation of the pact.[*](In 321 B.C. Cf. Cicero De off., iii. 30, 109.)

In the present affair, indeed, more than at any other time, the people showed their good will and affection towards Tiberius. For they voted to deliver up the consul unarmed and in bonds to the Numantines, but spared all the other officers for the sake of Tiberius. It would seem, too, that Scipio, who was then the greatest and most influential man at Rome, helped to save them; but none the less he was blamed[*](By Tiberius and his friends.) for not saving Mancinus, and for not insisting that the treaty with the Numantines, which had been made through the agency of his kinsman and friend Tiberius, should be kept inviolate.

It would appear that the disagreement between the two men arose chiefly through the ambition of Tiberius and from the friends and sophists who urged him on. But this disagreement certainly resulted in no mischief past remedy. And in my opinion Tiberius would never have met with his great misfortunes if Scipio Africanus had been present at Rome during his political activity. But as it was, Scipio was already at Numantia[*](Scipio was sent against Numantia in 134 B.C., and took and destroyed the city in the following year, in which year also Tiberius was killed.) and waging war there when Tiberius began to agitate for his agrarian laws. The occasion of this was as follows.