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 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.)

p.197

Caius Gracchus, at first, either because he feared his enemies, or because he wished to bring odium upon them, withdrew from the forum and lived quietly by himself, like one who was humbled for the present and for the future intended to live the same inactive life, so that some were actually led to denounce him for disliking and repudiating his brother’s political measures.

And he was also quite a stripling, for he was nine years younger than his brother, and Tiberius was not yet thirty when he died. But as time went on he gradually showed a disposition that was averse to idleness, effeminacy, wine-bibbing, and money-making; and by preparing his oratory to waft him as on swift pinions to public life, he made it clear that he was not going to remain quiet;

and in defending Vettius, a friend of his who was under prosecution, he had the people about him inspired and frantic with sympathetic delight, and made the other orators appear to be no better than children. Once more, therefore, the nobles began to be alarmed, and there was much talk among them about not permitting Caius to be made tribune.