Tiberius and Caius Gracchus

Plutarch

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

and this in fact was the only advantage which resulted from his political measures. For the people became more amicably disposed towards the senate; and whereas before this they had suspected and hated the nobles, Livius softened and dissipated their remembrance of past grievances and their bitter feelings by alleging that it was the sanction of the nobles which had induced him to enter upon his course of conciliating the people and gratifying the wishes of the many.

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.