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Ancient History Sourcebook
Appian:
The Civil Wars - On the Gracchi
[For 134-133 B.C.]: As the Romans conquered
the Italian tribes, one after another, in war, they seized part
of the lands and founded towns there, or placed colonies of their
own in
those already established, and used them as garrisons. They allotted
the cultivated part of the land obtained through war, to settlers,
or rented or sold it. Since they had not time to assign the part
which lay waste by the war, and this was usually the greater portion,
they issued a proclamation that for the time being any who cared
to work it could do so for a share of the annual produce, a tenth
part of the grain and a fifth of the fruit. A part of the animals,
both of the oxen and sheep was exacted from those keeping herds.
They did this to increase the Italian peoples, considered the
hardest working of races, in order to have plenty of supporters
at home. But the very opposite result followed; for the wealthy,
getting hold of most of the unassigned lands, and being encouraged
through the length of time elapsed to think that they would never
be ousted, and adding, part by purchase and part by violence,
the little farms of their poor neighbors to their possessions,
came to work great districts instead of one estate, using to this
end slaves as laborers and herders, because free laborers might
be drafted from agriculture into the army. The mere possession
of slaves brought them great profit through the number of their
children, which increased because they were absolved from service
in the wars. Thus the powerful citizens became immensely wealthy
and the slave class all over the country multiplied, while the
Italian race decreased in numbers and vigor, held down as they
were by poverty, taxes, and military service. If they had any
rest from these burdens, they wasted their time in idleness, because
the land was in the hands of the wealthy, who used slaves instead
of free laborers.
Because of these facts the people began to fear that they should
no longer have enough Italian allies, and that the state itself
would be imperiled by such great numbers of slaves. Not seeing
any cure for the trouble, as it was not practicable nor entirely
fair to dispossess men of their possessions so long occupied,
including their own trees, buildings and improvements, a decree
was at one time got through by the efforts of the tribunes that
no one should hold more than five hundred iugera [about three
hundred acres], or graze more than a hundred cattle or five hundred
sheep upon it. To make sure the law was observed, it was provided,
also, that there should be a stated number of freemen employed
on the lands, whose duty it should be to watch and report what
took place. Those holding lands under the law were compelled to
make oath to obey it, and penalties were provided against breaking
it. It was thought that the surplus land would soon be subdivided
amongst the poor in small lots, but there was not the slightest
respect shown for the law or the oaths. The few that seemed to
give some heed to them fraudulently made over their lands to their
relatives, but most paid no attention to the law whatsoever.
At last Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, an eminent man, ambitious
for honor, a forceful orator, and for these causes well known
to everybody, made an eloquent speech, while tribune, on the subject
of the Italian race, deploring that a people so warlike, and related
in descent to the Romans, were gradually sinking into pauperism
and decreasing in numbers, with no hope of betterment. He denounced
the swarm of slaves as useless in war and faithless to their masters,
and instanced the recent disaster brought upon the owners in Sicily
by their slaves, where the requirements of agriculture had greatly
increased their number. He called to mind, also, the war waged
by the Romans against the slaves, a war neither trivial nor short,
but long drawn but long drawn out and filled with misfortunes
and perils. After this address he once more brought forward the
law providing that no one should hold more than five hundred iugera
of the public land, but he made this addition to the previous
law, that the sons of the present occupants might each hold half
as large an allotment and that the surplus land should be divided
among the poor by triumvirs, that were to be changed yearly.
This greatly vexed the wealthy, because, on account of the triumvirs,
they could no longer pass by the law as they had done before;
nor could they purchase the lands allotted to others, because
Gracchus had provided against this by prohibiting sales. They
gathered into groups, complaining and charging the poor with seizing
the results of their cultivation, their vineyards, and their houses.
Some said they had paid their neighbors the price of the land;
were they to lose their money as well as the land? Others declared
that the graves of their fathers were in the ground that had been
assigned to them in the partition of their family estate. Others
stated that their wives' dowries had been spent on the land or
that it had been given to their own daughters as such. Loaners
of money could show advances made on this security. All sorts
of complaints and denunciations were heard at the same time. On
the other hand rose the wails of the poor, crying that they had
been reduced from plenty to the lowest pauperism and from that
to enforced lack of offspring, because they could not support
children. They enumerated the services they had rendered in war,
by which this very land had been obtained, and were indignant
at being despoiled of their part of the public property. They
upbraided the wealthy for using slaves, who were always faithless
and sulky, and for that cause useless in war, in the place of
freemen, citizens and men at arms. While these classes were complaining
and reproaching each other, a vast multitude, consisting of colonists
or dwellers in the free cities, or others in some way interested
in the lands and with similar fears, thronged into town and sided
with their respective parties. Angry at each other, they gathered
in riotous crowds, made bold by numbers, and, waiting for the
new law, tried in every way, some to obstruct its passage and
others to carry it. Party spirit in addition to individual interest
stimulated both sides in the preparation against each other which
they were making for the voting day.
What Gracchus sought in framing the law was the increase, not
of wealth, but of serviceable population. He was highly enthused
with the usefulness of the proposal and, believing that nothing
more beneficial or desirable could happen to Italy, he attached
no weight to the difficulties involved. When the time came for
voting he brought forward at some length many other arguments,
asking whether it was not right to allot among the common people
what belonged to them in common, whether a citizen did not always
deserve more concern than a slave, whether a man that fought in
the army was not more serviceable than one that did not, and whether
one that had an interest in the country was not the surer to be
faithful to the public weal. He did not tarry long on this contrast
between freemen and slaves, which he thought debasing, but plunged
at once into an outline of their hopes and fears for the state,
saying that the Romans had obtained most of their lands by conquest
and that they had the opportunities of acquiring the rest of the
inhabitable world, but now the question most doubtful of all was
whether, with plenty of warlike men, they should conquer the rest,
or whether, through their internal dissensions and weaknesses,
their foes should deprive them of what they already had. After
enlarging upon the honor and wealth on one side and the peril
and need of apprehension on the other, he warned the rich to reflect,
and said that for the accomplishment of such hopes they should
be willing to give this very land as a gift, if need be, to men
that would bring up offspring, and not, by wrangling over trivial
matters, lose sight of the more important ones---especially since
they were getting full pay for the labor they had expended in
the clear title to five hundred iugera of land, in a high state
of cultivation, to each of them without cost, and half as much
again for each son to those that had them. After saying much else
in the same strain and getting the poor aroused, as well as those
that were influenced by reason rather than the hope of profit,
he commanded the clerk to read the measure proposed.
Another tribune, Marcus Octavius, who had been prevailed on by
those holding land to interpose his veto (for among the Romans
the veto of the tribune always had absolute authority), ordered
the clerk to be silent. Upon this Gracchus rebuked him sternly
and adjourned the meeting to the next day. This time he placed
quite a force around, as if to coerce Octavius against his will,
and with threats bade the clerk read the measure proposed to the
assemblage. He began reading, but upon Octavius again interposing
his veto, stopped. Then the tribunes commenced quarreling with
each other, and something of an uproar broke forth from among
the people. The influential citizens begged the tribunes to lay
their disagreements before the senate for arbitration. Gracchus
acted upon this advice, thinking the measure to he agreeable to
all patriotic people, and hurried to the senate. As he found only
a few supporters there, and was reproached by the wealthy, he
rushed back to the forum and announced that he would take a vote
in the assembly on the following day upon the law, and also upon
the tenor of office of Octavius, to find out whether a tribune
of the plebs, acting contrary to the welfare of the plebs, could
continue to retain his magistracy.
So he did, and when Octavius, not at all intimidated, again put
in his veto, Gracchus had the pebbles distributed to vote on him
first. As the first tribe voted to impeach Octavius, Gracchus,
turning to him, pleaded with him to withdraw his veto. As he would
not do so, the votes of the other tribes were taken. At that time
there were thirty-five tribes. The seventeen voting first wrathfully
approved the measure. If the eighteenth should do likewise it
would constitute a majority. Once more in full view of the people
Gracchus passionately begged Octavius, in his great jeopardy,
not to obstruct this most devout work, so beneficial to all Italy,
and not to dash down the hopes so deeply grounded among the people,
whose wishes he ought, as a tribune, the rather to share in, and
not to run the risk of losing his office by public impeachment.
Upon saying this he called the gods to witness that he did not
of his own accord do any injury to his colleague, but, as Octavius
was still firm, he continued taking the vote, and Octavius was
thereupon reduced to the rank of private citizen and stole away
unnoticed.
Quintus Mummius was elected tribune in his stead and the agrarian
law was passed. The three men first appointed to allot the land
were Gracchus himself, the framer of the measure, his brother
of the same name, and his father-in-law, Appius Claudius, for
the people were still afraid that the law might not be executed
unless Gracchus, with all his family, should be placed at the
helm. Gracchus became enormously popular on account of the law
and was attended home by the mass of the people, as if he were
the founder, not merely of one city or people, but of all the
states of Italy. After this the victors returned to the fields
whence they had journeyed to conduct the affair, while the defeated
ones stayed in the city and went over the subject with one another,
feeling incensed and declaring that when Gracchus became a private
citizen he would be made sorry that he had dishonored the sacred
and inviolable office of tribune and had opened the way to such
a flood of strife in Italy.
At the coming of summer the announcement of the election of tribunes
was made, and as the day for voting drew near, it was clear that
the wealthy were vigorously aiding the election of those most
opposed to Gracchus. Fearing that misfortune would come upon him
if he should not be re-elected for the next year, Gracchus sent
to his friends in the fields to attend the assembly, but as their
time was taken up with the harvest he was forced, when the day
fixed for the voting was at hand, to depend upon the plebeians
of the city. So he went about canvassing each one to elect him
tribune for the next year, on account of the jeopardy he had put
himself in on their account. When the voting commenced, the first
two tribes went for Gracchus. The wealthy held that it was not
constitutional for a man to hold the office twice in succession.
The tribune, Rubrius, who had been selected by lot to preside
over the comitia, was in doubt upon the question, and Mummius,
who had been elected instead of Octavius, besought him to hand
the assembly over to his charge. So he did, but the other tribunes
objected that the chairmanship should be decided by lot, maintaining
that when Rubrius, who had been selected in that way, relinquished
it, the casting of lots ought to be done all over again. Since
there was a deal of wrangling on this point, Gracchus, who was
being bested, postponed the election until the next day. In deep
despondency he robed himself in black, though still in office,
and led his son about the forum, introducing him to each man and
putting him in their care, as if he himself were about to die
at the hands of his foes.
The poor were afflicted with great grief, and justly so, both
on account of themselves, for they thought that they would no
longer dwell in a free state under equitable laws, but were to
be reduced to slavery by the rich, and on account of Gracchus
personally, who had brought upon himself such peril for their
sakes. Therefore, they all escorted him with lamentations to his
home at nighttime, and bade him take heart for the next day. Gracchus
gathered courage, and calling together his friends before daylight,
imparted to them a sign to be made for a resort to violence. Then
he placed himself in the temple on the Capitoline hill, where
the election was to be held, and put himself in the middle of
the comitia. As he was checked by the other tribunes and by the
wealthy, who would not permit the votes to be taken on this question,
he gave the sign. A sudden uproar arose from those who saw it
and the resort to arms followed. Part of the faction of Gracchus
took their stand about him like a body-guard. Others that had
girded themselves, laid hold of the fasces and staves in the hands
of lictors and shattered them into pieces. The rich were thrown
out of the comitia with so much tumult and so many wounds that
the tribunes rushed from their seats in consternation, and the
priests closed the doors of the temple. Many ran hither and thither
and cast wild reports abroad. Some said that Gracchus had impeached
all the other tribunes and this was given credence because none
of them were in sight. Others said that he had declared himself
tribune for the next year without a vote.
Under these conditions the senate came together at the Temple
of Fides [Faith]. It is astounding to me that they never thought
of electing a dictator in this crisis, though they had often been
defended by the rule of an absolute magistrate amid such periods
of danger. Though this expedient had been found very serviceable
in ancient times, few thought of it either then or afterwards.
After coming to the decision they arrived at, they marched to
the Capitol, the high priest, Cornelius Scipio Nasica, at their
head, crying out in a sonorous voice, "Let those who would
save the state follow me." He gathered the border of his
toga around his head, either to attract a larger crowd to follow
him by his peculiar appearance, or to make for himself, as it
were, a helmet as a signal for violence to the spectators, or
to hide from the gods what he was about to do. When he came to
the temple and stepped forward against the adherents of Gracchus,
they yielded to the prestige of so eminent a citizen, for they
saw the senate behind him. The senators wrenched clubs from the
very hands of the followers of Gracchus, or with pieces of torn-up
benches or other things that had been brought for the use of the comitia, began mauling them and in hot pursuit, drove them
over the precipice. In the riot many followers of Gracchus were
killed and Gracchus himself, being seized near the temple, was
slain at the door near the statues of the kings. All the corpses
were thrown into the Tiber at night.
Thus died on the Capitol and while still tribune, Tiberius Gracchus,
the son of the Gracchus who was twice consul and of Cornelia,
the daughter of the Scipio that conquered Carthage. He lost his
life because he followed up an excellent plan in too lawless a
way. This awful occurrence, the first of the kind that took place
in the public assembly, was never long without a new parallel
thereafter. On the matter of the killing of Gracchus, the city
was divided between grief and joy. Some sorrowed for themselves
and him and bewailed the existing state of affairs, believing
that the republic no longer existed, but had been usurped by coercion
and violence. Others congratulated themselves that everything
had turned out just as they wanted it to. This event happened
at the time that Aristonicus was struggling with the Romans for
the mastery of Asia [the Fourth Macedonian War--ed.].
[For 132-124 B.C.] After Tiberius Gracchus
was killed, Appius Claudius, his father-in-law, died and Fulvius
Flaccus and Papirius Carbo were selected, together with the younger
[Gaius] Gracchus, to divide the land. As those in possession failed
to hand in lists of what they held, it was announced that informers
should give evidence against them. A large number of perplexing
lawsuits sprang up. Where a new field had been purchased next
to an old one, or where the land had been divided with allies,
the whole section had to be gone over in the surveying of this
one field, in order to discover how it had been sold or partitioned.
Some owners had not kept their bills of sale or deeds of allotment,
and even those that were unearthed were often ambiguous. On the
remeasuring of the land, some had to give up orchards and farm
buildings for bare fields. Others were moved from tilled to untilled
lands or to swamps or ponds. In short, the surveying had been
carelessly done when the land was first taken away from the enemy.
Since the first proclamation sanctioned anyone's cultivating the
unassigned land that wished to, men had been impelled to till
the parts lying next to their own land until the boundary line
between the two had been lost sight of. The lapse of time had
also made many changes. Thus, what injustice had been done by
the rich, though great, was not easily discovered. So nothing
less than a general commotion followed, everybody being ousted
from his own place and set down in somebody else's.
The Italian allies that remonstrated at this disturbance and especially
against the lawsuits suddenly brought against them, selected Cornelius
Scipio [Aemilianus], the destroyer of Carthage, to protect them
from these annoyances. As he had used their powerful aid in war,
he did not like to refuse their request. So, coming into the senate,
he explained the difficulty in enforcing Gracchus' law, although,
for the sake of the plebs, he did not openly attack it. He held
that these cases ought not to be judged by the triumvirs, as they
did not have the confidence of the disputants, but should be handed
over to others. As his point of view seemed just, they let themselves
be persuaded, and the consul, Tuditanus, was chosen to sit in
these cases. But when he began on the matter he saw its difficulties,
and then led the army against the Illyrians as an excuse to get
out of acting as judge, and since no one could bring the cases
before the triumvirs they fell into abeyance. Hence ill feeling
and resentment sprung up against Scipio among the people, because
they saw him for whose sake they had often taken sides against
the aristocracy and brought upon themselves hostility, twice electing
him consul contrary to law, now siding with the Italian allies
against them. When Scipio's foes saw this, they charged that he
was intent on annulling the law of Gracchus entirely, and to that
end was about to incite armed violence and bloodshed.
When the populace heard these accusations they were much disturbed
until Scipio, who had placed near his couch at home one evening
a tablet, on which he intended during the night to write the speech
he was to deliver before the people, was found dead on his couch
without a wound. Whether this was caused by Cornelia, the mother
of the Gracchi, assisted by her daughter, Sempronia, who was the
wife of Scipio, but unloved and unaffectionate because she was
deformed and childless, to prevent the law of Gracchus being abolished,
or whether, as some believed, he committed suicide because he
saw clearly that he could not do what he had said he would, is
not certain. Some say that slaves, after being exposed to torture,
confessed that unknown persons, who were brought through the rear
of the house by night, strangled him, and that those who knew
about it refrained from telling because the people were still
incensed at him and were glad he died. So Scipio perished, and
though he had been of enormous service to the Roman state, he
was not given the honor of a public funeral. Thus does the irritation
of the moment efface the appreciation of past service. This event,
important enough in itself, happened as an incident of the undertaking
of Gracchus.
Even after this those holding the lands long put off upon various
excuses the division of their holdings. Some thought the Italian
allies, who objected to it most strenuously, should be admitted
to Roman citizenship, in order that, out of thankfulness for so
great a favor, they should not longer protest about the land.
The Italians were ready to accept this compromise, since they
had rather have Roman citizenship than the ownership of these
fields. Fulvius Flaccus, at that time both consul and triumvir,
did his best to carry it through, but the senate was wroth at
the proposition to make their subjects of equal rank with themselves.
So the effort was dropped and the people, who had been so long
hopeful of obtaining land, began to be discouraged.
[For 124-122 B. C.] While they were
in this frame of mind, Gaius Gracchus, who had made himself popular
as a triumvir, stood for the tribuneship. He was the younger brother
of Tiberius Gracchus, the originator of the law. He had kept silent
concerning the killing of his brother for some time, but as some
of the senate treated him disdainfully, he offered himself as
a candidate for the tribuneship, and as soon as he was elected
to this high office began to intrigue against the senate. He proposed
that a monthly distribution of grain should be made to each citizen
at the expense of the state. This had not been the custom prior
to this. Thus he put himself at the head of the populace at a
bound by one stroke of politics, in which he had the assistance
of Fulvius Flaccus. Right after this he was elected tribune for
the next year also, for in cases where there were not enough candidates
the law permitted the people to fill out the list from those in
office.
In this way Gaius Gracchus became tribune a second time. After,
so to say, buying the plebs, he began to court the equites, who
hold the rank midway between the senate and the plebs, by another
similar stroke of politics. He handed over the courts of justice,
which had become distrusted on account of bribery, from the senators
to the equites, upbraiding the senators particularly for the recent
instances of Aurelius Cotta, Salinator, and, thirdly, Manius Aquilius
(the one that conquered Asia), all shameless bribe-takers, who
had been set free by the judges, even though envoys sent to denounce
them were still present, going about making disgraceful charges
against them. The senate was very much ashamed of such things
and agreed to the law and the people passed it. Thus the courts
of justice were handed over from the senate to the knights. It
is reported that soon after the enactment of this law Gracchus
made the remark that he had destroyed the supremacy of the senate
once for all, and this remark of his has been corroborated by
experience throughout the course of history. The privilege of
judging all Romans and Italians, even the senators themselves,
in all affairs of property, civil rights and exile, raised the equites like governors over them, and placed the senators
on the same plane as subjects. As the equites also voted
to support the power of the tribunes in the comitia and received
whatever they asked from them in return, they became more and
more dangerous opponents to the senators. Thus it soon resulted
that the supremacy in the state was reversed, the real mastery
going into the hands of the equites and only the honor
to the senate. The equites went so far in using their power
over the senators as to openly mock them beyond all reason. They,
too, imbibed the habit of bribe-taking and, after once tasting
such immense acquisitions, they drained the draft even more shamefully
and recklessly than the senators had done. They hired informers
against the rich and put an end to prosecutions for bribe-taking
entirely, partly by united action and partly by actual violence,
so that the pursuit of such investigations was done away with
entirely. Thus the judiciary law started another factional contest
that lasted for a long time and was fully as harmful as the previous
ones.
Gracchus constructed long highways over Italy and thus made an
army of contractors and workmen dependent on his favor and rendered
them subject to his every wish. He proposed the establishment
of a number of colonies. He prompted the Latin allies to clamor
for all the privileges of Roman citizenship, for the senate could
not becomingly deny them to the kinsmen of the Romans. He attempted
to give the right to vote to those allies that were not permitted
to take part in Roman elections, so as to have their assistance
in the passing of measures that he had in mind. The senate was
greatly perturbed at this and commanded the consuls to set forth
the following proclamation, "No one that does not have the
right to vote shall remain in the city or come within forty stadia
of it during the time that the voting is taking place upon these
laws." The senate also got Livius Drusus--- another tribune,
to intercede his veto against the measures brought forward by
Gracchus without telling the plebs his reasons for so doing; for
a tribune did not have to give his reasons for a veto. In order
to curry favor with the plebs they gave Drusus permission to found
twelve colonies, and the people were so much taken with this that
they began to jeer at the measures that Gracchus proposed.
[For 122-121 B.C.] As he had lost the
good will of the populace, Gracchus set sail for Africia along
with Fulvius Flaccus, who, after his consulship, had been elected
tribune through the same causes for which Gracchus had. A colony
had been assigned to Africa, because of the reported richness
of its soil, and these men had been selected as its founders for
the very sake of getting rid of them for awhile, in order that
the senate might be untrammeled by demagogy for a time. They laid
out a town for the colony in the same place where Carthage had
formerly lain, paying no heed to the fact that Scipio, when he
razed it, had consigned it with imprecations to eternal sheep-grazing.
They allotted six thousand colonists to this town, as against
the smaller number assigned by law in order thus to further conciliate
the people. Then, returning to Rome, they solicited the six thousand
from all Italy. The managers that had remained in Africa laying
out the town sent back word that wolves had dragged out and carried
far and wide the boundary marks placed by Gracchus and Fulvius,
and the sooth-sayers held this to be a bad omen for the colony.
So the senate called together the comitia proposing to repeal
the law authorizing the colony. When Gracchus and Fulvius saw
that they were about to fail in this affair they became desperate
and charged that the senate had lied about the wolves. The rashest
of the plebs, with daggers in hand, gathered about them and accompanied
them to the assembly where the comitia was to be held in regard
to the colony.
The people were already assembled and Fulvius had commenced to
address them about the matter when Gracchus reached the Capitol
surrounded by a body-guard of his friends. Agitated by his knowledge
of the unwonted schemes in hand, he turned away from the meeting
place of the comitia, passing into the porch, and walked
about, waiting to learn what would take place. Just then a pleb
by the name of Antyllus, who was making a sacrifice in the porch,
saw him thus troubled in mind, and, grasping him by the hand,
because he had either heard or guessed something or was prompted
through some impulse to speak to him, begged him to spare his
fatherland. Still more agitated and starting as if caught in the
act of a crime, Gracchus gave a sharp glance at the man. One of
his partisans, without any sign or order being given, gathered
from the piercing look itself given by Gracchus to Antyllus, that
the moment to strike was at hand, and thought he should render
Gracchus a kindness by giving the first blow; so he drew forth
his dagger and stabbed Antyllus. An uproar was raised, the dead
man being seen in the midst of the throng, and every one outside
fled away from the temple, fearful of a similar fate. Gracchus
went into the comitia in order to exonerate himself of
the act, but no one would even listen to him. Everyone turned
away from him as from one tainted with bloodshed. Gracchus and
Flaccus were confounded, and having missed the opportunity to
carry out their plans, they hurried home along with their adherents.
The rest of the great mass of people stayed in the forum during
the night, as if some fearful crisis were at hand. One of the
consuls, who was staying in the city, Opimius, ordered an armed
guard to be placed at the Capitol at daybreak and dispatched heralds
to convene the senate. He stationed himself in the Temple of Castor
and Pollux in the middle of the city, and awaited the outcome
there.
When these preparations had been made, the senate called Gracchus
and Flaccus from their homes to the senate-house to make their
defence, but with arms in their hands, they fled to the Aventine
hill, hoping that if they could get possession of it first the
senate would come to some understanding with them. They ran through
the city promising liberty to slaves, but none paid heed to them.
Nevertheless, with such troops as they had, they seized and barricaded
the Temple of Diana and dispatched Quintus, the son of Flaccus,
to the senate, trying to make terms and dwell in peace. The senate
sent back word for them to put down their arms, and to come to
the senate-house and tell what they desired, or else send no more
emissaries. As they sent Quintus a second time, the consul Opimius
seized him, as no longer an envoy after being thus warned, and
sent a force in arms against the followers of Gracchus. Gracchus
fled to a grove across the river by the wooden bridge, accompanied
by one slave, to whom he bared his throat when on the point of
being taken. Flaccus sought shelter in the shop of an acquaintance.
As those pursuing him did not know what shop he was in they threatened
to set fire to the whole line. The man that had given the suppliant
refuge was loath to point out his hiding place, but told some
one else to do so. Flaccus was caught and slain. The heads of
Gracchus and Flaccus were brought to Opimius and he gave an equal
weight in gold to the ones presenting them. The mob pillaged their
homes. Opimius seized their confederates and threw them into prison,
ordering them to be strangled to death. After this a lustration
on account of the bloodshed was made by the city and the senate
ordered the erection of a temple to Harmony in the forum.
Source:
From: Appian, Civil Wars, I: I-3, in Oliver J. Thatcher,
ed., The Library of Original Sources (Milwaukee: University
Research Extension Co., 1907), Vol. III: The Roman World, pp.
77-89.
Scanned by: J. S. Arkenberg, Dept. of History, Cal. State Fullerton
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