Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 3, 2025
Clearly the circumstances required a cooler head than that possessed by Flaccus; and there was the threat of a still further danger which rendered Gracchus's presence a necessity. The consulship for the following year was likely to be gained by one of the most stalwart champions of ultra-aristocratic views.
He would secure a permanent and stable constituency, and guard against the danger, which had proved fatal to his brother, of the absence from Rome of the majority of his supporters at some critical moment. From the imperfect records of Gracchus's proposal we gather that a certain amount of corn was to be sold monthly at a reduced price to any citizen who offered himself as a purchaser.
Some may have been caught in the stream of Gracchus's eloquence; others have found it useless or dangerous to oppose the enthusiasm which his proposals aroused, and the formidable combination which he created by the alluring prospects that he held out to the members of the equestrian order.
The suspicion of self-seeking or corruption was easily aroused at Rome, as it must have been in any state where such large powers were possessed by the executive, and where no control of the details of execution or expenditure had ever been exercised by the people; and Gracchus's all-embracing energy had betrayed him into a position, which had been accepted in a moment of enthusiasm, but which, disallowed as it was by current sentiment and perhaps by the law, might easily be shaken by the first suggestion of mistrust.
It were better to forget Octavius, if Octavius would allow himself to be forgotten; but the sturdy champion of the senate, still in the middle of his career, may have been a future danger and a present eyesore to the people: Gracchus's invectives probably carried him and his auditors further than he intended, and the rehabilitation of his brother's tribunate in its integrity may have seemed to demand this strong assertion of the justice of his act.
Here he had the very poor as his neighbours, the true urban proletariate which never dreamed of availing itself of agrarian assignments or colonial schemes, but set a very real value on the corn-distributions, and may have believed that their continuance would be threatened by Gracchus's fall from power.
The Newgate Calendar of Paris contains as many illustrious names as the index to Plutarch's Lives; and I believe there are now many Brutus's and Gracchus's in durance vile, besides a Mutius Scaevola condemned to twenty years imprisonment for an unskilful theft. A man of Amiens, whose name is Le Roy, signified to the public, through the channel of a newspaper, that he had adopted that of Republic.
"It was," said he, "against your distributing my goods to every man as you thought proper; but, as you do so, I claim my share." Did not this grave and wise man sufficiently show that the public revenue was dissipated by the Sempronian law? Read Gracchus's speeches, and you will pronounce him the advocate of the treasury.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking