from them.

The optimates soon saw that the labors of Gracchus had drawn the people
close to him, and they determined to weaken his influence by indirect
means, rather than venture to make any immediate display of opposition.
They according adopted the sagacious policy of making it appear that
they wished to do more for the people than their own champion proposed.
They allowed a rich and eloquent demagogue, Marcus Livius Drusus, to
act for them, and he deceived the people by proposing measures that
appeared more democratic than those of Gracchus, whose power over the
people was thus somewhat undermined. The next step was then taken. In
the midst of an election a tumult was excited, and Gracchus was obliged
to flee, over the wooden bridge, to the Grove of the Furies. Death was
his only deliverance. The optimates tried to make it out that he had
been an infamous man, but the common people afterward loved both the
brothers and esteemed them as great benefactors who had died for them,

The fall of the Gracchi left the people without a leader, and the
optimates easily kept possession of the government, though they did not
yet feel disposed to proceed at once to carry out their own wishes
fully, for fear that they might sting the _populares_ beyond
endurance. They stopped the assignments of lands, however, allowing
those who had occupied large tracts to keep them, and thus the
desolation and retrogression which had so deeply moved Gracchus
continued and increased even more rapidly than it had in his time. The
state fell into a condition of corruption in every department, and
office was looked upon simply as a means of acquiring wealth, not as
something to be held as a trust for the good of the governed. The
nation suffered also from servile insurrections; the seas were overrun
with pirates; the rich plunged into vice; the poor were pushed down to