Book LVIII.
Titus Sempronius Gracchus, the plebeian tribune, having proposed an Agrarian law,
(contrary to the sense of the senate, and the equestrian order,) to the effect that no
person should hold more than five hundred acres of the public lands, wrought himself up to
such a degree of passion that he deprived his colleague, Marcus Octavius, of his authority
by a law which he made, and appointed himself, together with his brother Caius, and his
father-in-law Appius Claudius, commissioners for dividing the lands. He also proposed
another Agra- rian law, by which the land was still more at his disposal, that the same
commissioners should be authorized to determine which was public and which private land.
When afterwards it appeared that there was not land sufficient to be divided so as to
satisfy the people, whose hopes he had raised to cupidity by the expectations held out to
them, he declared that he would propose a law, that all those, who by the law of
Sempronius were entitled to such grant, should be paid in money out of the bequest of king
Attalus. But Attalus, king of Pergamus, son of Eumenes had made the Romans his heirs. The
senate was roused to indignation at such repeated ill-treatment; and chiefly Publius
Mucius, the consul, who, having delivered a severe invective against Gracchus in the
senate, was seized by him, dragged before the people, and accused; nevertheless he
continued to inveigh against him from the rostrum. Gracchus, endeavouring to procure his
re-election as tribune, was slain in the Capitol, by the chief nobles, by the advice of
Publius Cornelius Nasica, after having been beaten first with the fragments of the seats,
and was thrown, without the rites of sepulture, into the river, together with some others
who fell in the tumult. Various engagements, with various success, against the slaves in
Sicily are recorded.
