precisely when he had reached his brother's age, Caius Gracchus came
forward to avenge him, and carry the movement through another stage. Young
Caius had been left one of the commissioners of the land law; and it is
particularly noticeable that though the author of it had been killed, the
law had survived him being too clearly right and politic in itself to be
openly set aside. For two years the commissioners had continued to work,
and in that time forty thousand families were settled on various parts of
the _ager publicus_, which the patricians had been compelled to
resign. This was all which they could do. The displacement of one set of
inhabitants and the introduction of another could not be accomplished
without quarrels, complaints, and perhaps some injustice. Those who were
ejected were always exasperated. Those who entered on possession were not
always satisfied. The commissioners became unpopular. When the cries
against them became loud enough, they were suspended, and the law was then
quietly repealed. The Senate had regained its hold over the assembly, and
had a further opportunity of showing its recovered ascendency when, two
years after the murder of Tiberius Gracchus, one of his friends introduced
a bill to make the tribunes legally re-eligible. Caius Gracchus actively
supported the change, but it had no success; and, waiting till times had
altered, and till he had arrived himself at an age when he could carry
weight, the young brother retired from politics, and spent the next few
years with the army in Africa and Sardinia. He served with distinction; he
made a name for himself both as a soldier and an administrator. Had the
Senate left him alone, he might have been satisfied with a regular career,
and have risen by the ordinary steps to the consulship. But the Senate saw
in him the possibilities of a second Tiberius; the higher his reputation,
the more formidable he became to them. They vexed him with petty
prosecutions, charged him with crimes which had no existence, and at
length by suspicion and injustice drove him into open war with them. Caius
Gracchus had a broader intellect than his brother, and a character