APPENDIX III 441 



a milder law made against so much injustice and oppres- 

 sion. For they who deserved to have been punished for 

 their infringement on the rights of the community and fined 

 for holding the lands contrary to the law were to have a con- 

 sideration for giving up their groundless claims. . . . But 

 though the reformation was conducted with so much tender- 

 ness the people were satisfied, they were willing to overlook 

 what was passed, on condition that they might guard against 

 future usurpation. On the other hand, persons of great pro- 

 perty opposed the law out of avarice, and the law-giver out 

 of a spirit of resentment and malignity."^ By his appeals to 

 the people this great land reformer bore down all open op- 

 position. The people listened with eagerness to schemes for 

 the recovery of lands of which they had been unjustly 

 deprived. Dr. Greenidge describes their attitude : " The 

 voiceless Roman people was seeking its only mode of utter- 

 ance, a tribune who should be what the tribunes had been 

 of old, the servants of the many, not the creatures of the 

 few." This great Tribune, Tiberius Gracchus, declared that 

 it was the interests of Italy, not merely of the Roman prole- 

 tariat, that were at stake. He pointed out "how the Italian 

 peasantry had dwindled in numbers and how that portion that 

 still survived had been reduced to a poverty that was irremedi- 

 able by their own efforts." (Greenidge.) " The wild beasts of 

 Italy," he said," have their caves to retire to, but the brave men 

 who spill their blood in her cause have nothing left but air and 

 light. . . . The private soldiers fight and die to advance the 

 wealth and luxury of the great, and they are called masters 

 of the world, while they have not a foot of ground in their 

 possession."^ Notwithstanding what is described as the 

 "inherent reasonableness" of the Tribune's proposals, these 

 proposals received the most deadly opposition. The terri- 

 torial magnates thought that the " cause would perish with 

 the demagogue," and accordingly by intrigue and treachery 

 they accomplished his death. Referring to this event, the 

 eminent writer already quoted states : " The murder of a 

 young man who was under thirty at the time of his death 



^ "Plutarch's Lives," Tiberius Gracchus. 

 " Ibid. 



