the streets in mourning, requesting protection from the people against the designs of the patricians, who, as he said, threatened his life. On the following day a tumult arose in the assembly of the people, between the opposite parties. The senators broke up their meeting, and repaired in a body to the forum, followed by an immense crowd of the young patricians armed with clubs and staves. Tiberius, apprehensive of his danger, endeavored to escape with precipitation, his friends following his example; but falling down in the throng, he was assailed by many hands, and slain upon the spot. About three hundred of his followers met with the same fate, and their dead bodies were flung into the Tyber. Whether the views of Tiberius Gracchus were truly disinterested, and the result of real though misguided patriotism, or whether a criminal ambition was their motive, as his opponents strongly reported, is a question which cannot be with certainty resolved. A strong presumption against him arises from this circumstance, that his brother-in-law, Scipio Emilianus, and his cousin Scipio Nasica, who was actually instrumental in his death, were of the latter opinion. Scipio Emilianus, a man of strict virtue and enlightened patriotism, exerted all his powers to quell those dissensions between the senate and people, which he saw the carrying the Licinian law into execution would inevitably tend to exasperate to the hazard of all civil order. The consequence of his generous endeavors was, that he was found dead in his bed. Some years afterwards, Caius Gracchus, uintimidated by his brother's fate, pursued the same steps which had brought him to destruction. Being elected tribune, he took every measure for a strict enforcement of the Licinian law. which had hitherto been executed with great remissness. He procured the revival of an obsolete statute, which prohibited he capital punishment of any citizen without the concurring sanction of the senate and people; and with the view of extending his popularity beyond the bounds of Rome, he proposed a law by which the right of citizenship should be conferred on all the inhabitants of the Roman territories within the bounds of Italy; with an additional enactment, that whoever claimed the right of citizen, if cast by the censors, might appeal to the popular assembly. These measures, as may be supposed, gave great disgust to the aristocracy, who, it is plain, were at this time the real supporters of the Roman constitution. But the measure which above every other tended to exasperate the senators against Caius, was an inquiry which he set on foot into the corruptions of their body, in which he so far prevailed, that a law was passed depriving that assembly of all concern in the administration of justice, and declaring that in future the civil judges should be exclusively chosen from the order of knights; an act which the senate justly regarded not only as a deep insult to their body, but as a fatal blow to the constitution of the state. In the view of counteracting these most dangerous innovations, and of undermining the power of the demagogue, the party of the senate and patricians set up Livius Drusus, a young man of uncommon abilities, for whom they procured the office of tribune, and instructed him to supplant the influence of Caius by affecting a still more ardent zeal for the popular interest. They despatched Caius at the same time on a mission to Africa to rebuild the city of Carthage. His absence diminished the number of his partisans and increased those of Livius. At his return, he thought te regain his ground by soliciting a renewed appointment to the tribu nate, but was mortified by a rejection of his pretensions. Opimius, a man whom he knew to be his determined enemy, was elected to the consulate, and every thing tended to convince him that his popularity was fast declining. It is said that his mother, Cornelia, warned him in passionate terms to escape, by a change of conduct, the fate of his elder brother; but he was deaf to her remonstrances. In a meeting of the Comitia, his partisans having come armed to the forum, a tumult ensued, in which one of them stabbed a lictor of the consul with his poniard; a most furious conflict followed, in which Caius Gracchus, together with about three thousand of the popular party, were massacred in the streets of Rome. Such was the fate of the Gracchi, men endowed by nature with those talents which properly directed, might have conduced to the happiness and aggrandizement of their country; but either the vic tims of a criminal ambition, or precipitated by an intemperance of democratic zeal into mesures subversive of all civil order, they perished as the disturbers of the public peace. There is no female character on whom the ancient writers have lavished more praise than on Cernelia, the mother of Gracchi, of whose greatness of mind under the severest misfortunes they speak in terms of the highest eulogy She had seen the funerals of twelve of her children, the last of whom were Tiberius and Caius Gracchus. While her friends were lamenting her misfortunes, "Call not me unfortunate," said she; "I shall never cease to think myself a happy woman, who have been the mother of the Gracchi." Imprudent and dangerous fo: themselves as she must have thought the conduct of her sons, she most naturally leemed it the result of real virtue and patriotism. Plutarch in *❝ Cornelia duodecim partûs totidem funeribus recognovit ; et de ceteris facile est, quos nec editos nec amissos civitas sensit. Tiberium et Caium Gracchum, quos etiam qui bonos viros negaverit, magnos fatebitur, et occisos vidit et inse pultos. Consolantibus tamen, miseramque dicentibus, nunquam, inquit, non feli cem me dicam quæ Gracchos peperi.' Senec. Consol. ad Marc., c. 16. forms us that she spent the remaining years of her life in a villa, near Misenum, visited, respected, and beloved by the most eminent men, both Greeks and Romans, and honored by interchang ing presents even with foreign princes. Her conversation was delightful when she recounted anecdotes of her father Africanus: but all were astonished when she spoke freely of her sons, of their great deeds and their untimely fate, and this without ever shedding a tear. "It was thought by some," continues Plutarch, "that the pressure of age and misfortune had deadened her maternal feelings; but they (he adds) who were of that weak opinion, were ignorant that a superior mind,, enlightened by a liberal education, can rise above all the calamities of life; and that though fortune may sometimes oppress virtue, she cannot deprive her of that serenity and resolution which never forsake her in the day of adversity.' The universal corruption that now prevailed at Rome was in nothing more conspicuous than in a celebrated event which happened at this time. The old king Massinissa, whom we have mentioned as an ally of the Romans at the time of the first invasion of Africa by Scipio, left three sons, who jointly governed Numidia; till, by the death of his brothers, Micipsa remained sole master of the kingdom. This prince, though he had two sons, Adherbal and Hiempsal, adopted his nephew Jugurtha, a young man of promising talents, whose friendship he weakly thought to secure for his cousins by giving him an equal share with them of his dominions. No sooner was Micipsa dead, than this ungrateful youth resolved to attain an undivided empire by putting them to death. Hiempsal was his first victim; and Adherbal, dreading a similar fate, betook himself to Rome, to sue for justice and to entreat the aid and protection of the Romans, to whom his father hid rendered his kingdom tributary. But the money of Jugurtha bad been beforehand with him. He had bribed to his interest a sufficient party in the senate to procure a reference to ten commissioners, who were sent into Africa with plenary powers to decide between the contending parties. These, by similar policy, the traitor won to his interest; so that they declared him innocent of the charge, and decreed to him the sovereignty of one half of Numidia. Jugurtha now pursued his schemes for the destruction of Adherbal, and, openly declaring war, besieged him in the town of Cirtha. The Romans sent their deputies to put a stop to such culpable proceedings; but these, like the former commissioners, were not proof against corruption. Adherbal was obliged to capitulate and throw himself on the mercy of Jugurtha, by whom he was immediately put to death. These flagrant enormities, which called loud for vengeance, continued yet to meet with shameful palliation in the Roman senate; but the Roman people were not bribed; and their cries for justice at length compelled the rulers of the republic to declare war against Jugurtha. In the interval of a truce, this traitor appeared in person at Rome, and had the confidence to justify his proceedings in full senate; where, as before, he had so lavishly bestowed his money as to insure his acquittal. A continuance, however, of the same conduct excited at length the utmost indignation of the Romans, and Metellus, the consul, was sent against him, at the head of a large army. Metellus chose for his lieutenant the celebrated Marius, a man of mean birth, who possessed great military talents and the utmost personal intrepidity, but with a total want of every generous and virtuous principle. Instigated by ambition, and bound by no ties of gratitude to the man who had raised him from obscurity, he sought leave to go to Rome, and there represented the conduct of Metellus in so unfavorable a point of view, and talked so plausibly of what he could himself have done in the same situation, that he gained the people to his interest, was elected to the consulate, and obtained the charge of prosecuting the war against Jugurtha. Metellus, though in the train of success, being thus superseded, returned to Rome, where a just sense of his services prevailed over every injurious impression, and he was decreed the honor of a triumph. But Marius with all his military abilities, was obliged to employ treachery to finish the Jugurthan war. The perfidious character of Jugurtha justified, as he thought, a similar policy in his enemy. Sylla, then acting as quæstor to Marius, seduced Bocchus, king of Mauritania, the father-in-law of Jugurtha, from his alliance; and that prince, to purchase peace with the Romans, delivered up Jugurtha into their hands. He was brought to Rome in chains, and, after gracing the triumph of Marius, was thrown into a dungeon and starved to death. The Romans were at this time under a serious alarm from the barbarous nations, who, pouring down from the northern parts of Europe, suddenly made their appearance in a countless host even upon the frontiers of Italy. This horde of savages, who were said to amount to more than 300,000 men in arms, attended with their women, children, and cattle, were known by the name of Cimbri; but there is no certainty of the precise country from which they migrated. The consul Papirius Carbo was despatched to Illyricum to oppose their progress, but with inadequate force; for they overwhelmed his army like a tempest. They fought in a dense and solid mass, of which the foremost ranks were chained together by their girdles. Had this torrent forced its way across the Rhætian Alps into Italy, it is hard to say what might have been the fate of the Roman empire; but fortunately they chose a different course, and dissipated the alarm for a time by passing onward through the southern Gaul to the vicinity of the Pyrenees. The diversion of the barbarous Cimbri to the quarter of Spain gave only a temporary respite to the Roman arms. They began to overrun the Roman Province in Gaul in separate large bodies, passing from the southward to the neighborhood of the Rhine and the banks of the Danube. In one large body, they poured down by the passes of Carinthia, or the valley of Trent, to join another detachment on the banks of the Po. Marius, now in his fourth consulate, had for his special department the province of Gaul, and consequently the charge of opposing these invaders, who, from the cautious movements of the Roman army, now began to insult them as a dastardly foe that durst not meet them in the field. Marius signally displayed his talents as a general by attacking these separate divisions, while they had spread themselves over the country, intent solely on ravage and plunder. In one campaign 200,000 of the barbarians were slain in the field, and 90,000 taken prisoners, among whom was Teutobocchus, one of their kings. In another engagement on the Po, the remainder of this savage horde was entirely destroyed. The popularity of Marius, from this great success, procured his election to the consulate for the fifth time, and the honors of a triumph. The plunder of Jugurtha's kingdom brought a new accession of wealth to the Romans. They now found not only their ambition gratified by their extensive conquests, but their appetite for luxury, which was daily increasing. We have seen its effects in that shameful corruption of the senate, the highest order, and the natural guardians of the virtue of the republic. Yet even this was but the dawning of that profligacy of manners and of principle, which, from this period, we shall see pervaded all ranks of the state. The annals of the Roman republic now become only the history of the leaders of different factions, who assuage their avarice, their ambition, and revenge, in the blood of their fellow citizens. in Livius Drusus, as tribune of the people, involved the republic a war with the allied states, which was a prelude to those civil wars which ended in its destruction. This tribune renewed the project of Caius Gracchus for extending to the allies the rights of citizenship. The proposition was violently combated; the allies contended that as they paid their taxes to the state, and supplied in war a great proportion of the legions, it was but just they should share the privileges of the republic as well as its burdens. On the other hand to multiply to so vast an extent the popular votes in the Comitia, and thus extend the field of corruption and the empire of tumult in all the public proceedings, appeared to involve the most ruinous consequences to the state. The Roman populace itself dreaded the diminution of its influence by this admixture of aliens; * and, in reality, the measure was cordially * The number of Roman citizens, which, at the time of the census made by Servius Tullius, amounted only to 83,000, had increased at the commencement of the Social war, to 463,000 men capable of bearing arms.-Beaufort, Rep. Rom. 1. iv. c. 4 |