Gracchus was aspiring to the power of king, which, they were reminded,
had been forever abolished ages before. No opportunity was given him to
explain his intentions. A great mob was raised and a street fight
precipitated, in the midst of which three hundred persons were killed
with sticks and stones and pieces of benches. Among them was Gracchus
himself, who thus died a martyr to his patriotic plans for the Roman
republic. [Footnote: The course of Gracchus was not understood at the
time by all good citizens; and even for ages after he was considered a
designing demagogue. It was not until the great Niebuhr, to whom we owe
so much in Roman history, explained fully the nature of the agrarian
laws which Gracchus passed, that the world accepted him for the hero
and honest patriot that he was.]

Caius Gracchus was in Spain at the time of his brother's murder, and
Scipio, his brother-in-law, was there also. So little did Scipio
understand Tiberius, that when he heard of his death he quoted the
words of Minerva to Mercury, which he remembered to have read in his
Homer, "So perish he who doth the same again!" The next year brother
and brother-in-law returned from Spain, but Caius did not seem to care
to enter political life, and as he lived in quiet for some years, it
was thought that he disapproved his brother's laws. Little did the
public dream of what was to come.

Meantime Scipio became the acknowledged leader of the optimates, and in
order to keep the obnoxious law from being enforced, proposed to take
it out of the hands of the commission and give it to the senate. His
proposition was vigorously opposed in the forum, and when he retired to
his home to prepare a speech to be delivered on the subject, a number
of friends thought it necessary to accompany him as protectors. The
next morning the city was startled by the news that he was dead. His