and Africa, to which was soon to be added the southern portion of Gaul
over the Alps, between those mountains and the Pyrenees called
_Provincia Gallia_ (Provence).




XII.

A FUTILE EFFORT AT REFORM.



One day when the conqueror of Carthage, Scipio Africanus, was feasting
with other senators at the Capitol, the veteran patrician was asked by
the friends about him to give his daughter Cornelia to a young man of
the plebeian family of Sempronia, Tiberius Gracchus by name. This young
man was then about twenty-five years old; he had travelled and fought
in different parts of the world, and had obtained a high reputation for
manliness. Just at this time he had put Africanus under obligations to
him by defending him from attacks in public life, and the old commander
readily agreed to the request of his friends. When he returned to his
home and told his wife that he had given away their daughter, she
upbraided him for his rashness; but when she heard the name of the
fortunate man, she said that Gracchus was the only person worthy of the
gift. The mother's opinion proved to be correct. The young people lived
together in happiness, and Cornelia became the mother of three
children, who carried down the good traits of their parents. One of
these was a daughter named, like her mother, Cornelia, who became the
wife of Scipio Africanus the younger, and the others were her two