Tiberius and Caius Gracchus

Then Nasica said to him, What, then, if Tiberius had ordered them to set fire to the Capitol? Blossius at first replied that Tiberius would not have given such an order; but when the same question was put to him often and by many persons, he said: If such a man as Tiberius had ordered such a thing, it would also have been right for me to do it; for Tiberius would not have given such an order if it had not been for the interest of the people. [*](For the story of Blossius, cf. Cicero, De am. 11. 37; Valerius Maximus, iv. 7. 1. ) Well, then, Blossius was acquitted, and afterwards went to Aristonicus[*](The pretender to the throne of Attalus Philometor (xiv. 1). He was defeated and taken prisoner by the Romans in 130 B.C.) in Asia, and when the cause of Aristonicus was lost, slew himself.

But the senate, trying to conciliate the people now that matters had gone so far, no longer opposed the distribution of the public land, and proposed that the people should elect a commissioner in place of Tiberius. So they took a ballot and elected Publius Crassus, who was a relative of Gracchus; for his daughter Licinia was the wife of Caius Gracchus.

And yet Cornelius Nepos[*](In a lost biography.) says that it was not the daughter of Crassus, but of the Brutus who triumphed over the Lusitanians, whom Caius married; the majority of writers, however, state the matter as I have done. Moreover, since the people felt bitterly over the death of Tiberius and were clearly awaiting an opportunity for revenge, and since Nasica was already threatened with prosecutions, the senate, fearing for his safety, voted to send him to Asia, although it had no need of him there.

For when people met Nasica, they did not try to hide their hatred of him, but grew savage and cried out upon him wherever he chanced to be, calling him an accursed man and a tyrant, who had defiled with the murder of an inviolable and sacred person the holiest and most awe-inspiring of the city’s sanctuaries. And so Nasica stealthily left Italy, although he was bound there by the most important and sacred functions; for he was pontifex maximus. He roamed and wandered about in foreign lands ignominiously, and after a short time ended his life at Pergamum.

Now, it is no wonder that the people so much hated Nasica, when even Scipio Africanus, than whom no one would seem to have been more justly or more deeply loved by the Romans, came within a little of forfeiting and losing the popular favour because, to begin with, at Numantia, when he learned of the death of Tiberius, he recited in a loud voice the verse of Homer[*](Odyssey, i. 47 (Athena, of Aegisthus).):—

1. So perish also all others who on such wickedness
2. venture,

and because, in the second place, when Caius and Fulvius asked him in an assembly of the people what he thought about the death of Tiberius, he made a reply which showed his dislike of the measures advocated by him. Consequently the people began to interrupt him as he was speaking, a thing which they had never done before, and Scipio himself was thereby led on to abuse the people. Of these matters I have written circumstantially in my Life of Scipio.[*](One of the lost biographies.)