married to the second most famous of them, Scipio Africanus the Younger.
He had been himself in antagonism with the tribunes, and had taken no part
at any time in popular agitations.

The father died when Tiberius was still a boy, and the two brothers grew
up under the care of their mother, a noble and gifted lady. They displayed
early remarkable talents. Tiberius, when old enough, went into the army,
and served under his brother-in-law in the last Carthaginian campaign. He
was first on the walls of the city in the final storm. Ten years later he
went to Spain as Quaestor, where he carried on his father's popularity,
and by taking the people's side in some questions fell into disagreement
with his brother-in-law. His political views had perhaps already inclined
to change. He was still of an age when indignation at oppression calls out
a practical desire to resist it. On his journey home from Spain he
witnessed scenes which confirmed his conviction and determined him to
throw all his energies into the popular cause. His road lay through
Tuscany, where he saw the large-estate system in full operation--the
fields cultivated by the slave gangs, the free citizens of the Republic
thrust away into the towns, aliens and outcasts in their own country,
without a foot of soil which they could call their own. In Tuscany, too,
the vast domains of the landlords had not even been fairly purchased. They
were parcels of the _ager publicus_, land belonging to the State,
which, in spite of a law forbidding it, the great lords and commoners had
appropriated and divided among themselves. Five hundred acres of State
land was the most which by statute any one lessee might be allowed to
occupy. But the law was obsolete or sleeping, and avarice and vanity were
awake and active. Young Gracchus, in indignant pity, resolved to rescue
the people's patrimony. He was chosen tribune in the year 133. His brave
mother and a few patricians of the old type encouraged him, and the battle
of the revolution began. The Senate, as has been said, though without