brothers. Tiberius and Caius, who are known as _the_ Gracchi. Tiberius
Gracchus lived to be over fifty years old, and won still greater
laurels in war and peace at home and in foreign lands. Cicero says that
he did a great service to the state by gathering together on the
Esquiline the freedmen who had spread themselves throughout the
tribes, and restricting their franchise (B.C. 169). Thus, Cicero
thought, he succeeded for a time in checking the ruin of the republic.
[Footnote: The freedmen had been confined to the four city tribes in
220 B.C.]

There was sad need of some movement to correct abuses that had grown up
in Rome, and the men destined to stand forth as reformers were the two
Gracchi, sons of Cornelia and Tiberius. Their father did not live to
complete their education, but their mother, though courted by great
men, and by at least one king, refused to marry again, and gave up her
time to educating her sons, whom she proudly called her "jewels" when
the Roman matrons, relieved from the restrictions of the Oppian law,
boastfully showed her the rich ornaments of gold and precious stones
that they adorned themselves with. The brothers had eminent Greeks to
give them instruction, and grew up wise, able and eloquent, though each
exhibited his wisdom and ability in a different way.

Tiberius, who was nine years older than his brother, came first into
public life. He went to Africa with his brother-in-law, when the
younger Africanus completed the destruction of Carthage, and afterward
he took part in the wars in Spain. It is said that, as he went through
Etruria on his way to Spain, he noticed that the fields were cultivated
by foreign slaves, working in clanking chains, instead of by freemen;
and that because the rich had taken possession of great ranges of
territory, the poor Romans had not even a clod to call their own,