Fragments by Caius Gracchus

MY life in the province was not planned to suit my ambition, but your interests. There was no gormandizing with me, no handsome slaves in waiting, and at my table your sons saw more seemliness than at headquarters. No man can say without lying that I ever took a farthing as a present or put anyone to expense. I was there two years; and if a single courtezan ever crossed my doors, or if proposals from me were ever made to anyone’s slave-pet, set me down for the vilest and most infamous of men. And if I was so scrupulous toward slaves, you may judge what my life must have been with your sons. And, citizens, here is the fruit of such a life. I left Rome with a full purse and have brought it back empty. Others took out their wine jars full of wine, and brought them back full of money.

The Gracchi (d.121 B.C.)

(About 122 B.C.)

Born about 161 B.C.; served in Spain with Scipio Africanus Minor; Questor in Sardinia in 126–123; elected Tribune of the people in 123, when he secured a renewal of the Agrarian Law passed in the time of his brother, built and improved roads, and sought to establish democratic government in Rome; reelected Tribune in 122; failed of reelection in 121; killed in a disturbance in Rome in 121.



MY life in the province was not planned to suit my ambition, but your interests. There was no gormandizing with me, no handsome slaves in waiting, and at my table your sons saw more seemliness than at headquarters. No man can say without lying that I ever took a farthing as a present or put anyone to expense. I was there two years; and if a single courtezan ever crossed my doors, or if proposals from me were ever made to anyone’s slave-pet, set me down for the vilest and most infamous of men. And if I was so scrupulous toward slaves, you may judge what my life must have been with your sons. And, citizens, here is the fruit of such a life. I left Rome with a full purse and have brought it back empty. Others took out their wine jars full of wine, and brought them back full of money.

Your forefathers declared war against Felisci, in order to revenge the cause of Genucius, one of their tribunes, to whom that people had given scurrilous language; and they thought capital punishment little enough for Caius Veturius, because he alone did not break way for a tribune, who was passing through the forum. But you suffered Tiberius to be dispatched with bludgeons before your eyes, and his dead body to be dragged from the Capitol through the middle of the city in order to be thrown into the river. Such of his friends, too, as fell into their hands, were put to death without form of trial. Yet, by the custom of our country, if any person under a prosecution for a capital crime did not appear, an officer was sent to his door in the morning, to summon him by sound of trumpet, and the judges would never pass sentence before so public a citation. So tender were our ancestors in any matter where the life of a citizen was concerned.

Note: Caius Gracchus was the greatest orator of his time in Rome. Dion Cassius, the historian, who lived 300 years later than Caius, has preserved for us the tradition that was still extant in his time. He says Caius “far surpassed Tiberius in his gift of language” and “was the first to walk up and down in the assemblies which he haranged, and the first to bear his arms; hence neither of these practices has been thought improper since he employed them.” Plutarch confirms this testimony: “When he entered upon his office he soon became the leading tribune, partly by means of his eloquence, in which he was greatly superior to the rest, and partly on account of the misfortunes of his family, which gave him opportunity to bewail the cruel fate of his brothers.” Cicero born sixteen years after the death of Caius, said he “was the first man who, in an old literature, appeared with a new language.” The Langhorne translation. Read more!

Fragments by Tiberius Gracchus

THE WILD beasts of Italy (Note: Plutarch says this speech by Tiberius Gracchus “filled the people with enthusiastic fury, and none of his adversaries durst pretend to answer him.” Smith, in his “Dictionary,” refers to it as “a noble specimen of the deeply felt and impressive eloquence with which Gracchus addressed the people in those days.”) have their caves to retire to, but the brave men who spill their blood in her cause have nothing left but air and light. Without houses, without settled habitations, they wander from place to place with their wives and children; and their generals do but mock them when, at the head of their armies, they exhort their men to fight for their sepulchers and the gods of their hearths, for among such numbers perhaps there is not one Roman who has an altar that has belonged to his ancestors or a sepulcher in which their ashes rest. The private soldiers fight and die to advance the wealth and luxury of the great, and they are called masters of the world without having a sod to call their own.

The Gracchi (d.133 B.C.)

(About 133 B.C.)

Born about 168 B.C., died in 133; eldest son of Cornelia, the daughter of Scipio Africanus Major; accompanied Scipio Africanus Minor to Carthage; Questor in 137; served in the Numantine War; Tribune of the people in 133; secured the revival of the Licinian Agrarian Law of 367 B.C., in 133; killed with many of his followers in an electoral disturbance in Rome.



THE WILD beasts of Italy (Note: Plutarch says this speech by Tiberius Gracchus “filled the people with enthusiastic fury, and none of his adversaries durst pretend to answer him.” Smith, in his “Dictionary,” refers to it as “a noble specimen of the deeply felt and impressive eloquence with which Gracchus addressed the people in those days.”) have their caves to retire to, but the brave men who spill their blood in her cause have nothing left but air and light. Without houses, without settled habitations, they wander from place to place with their wives and children; and their generals do but mock them when, at the head of their armies, they exhort their men to fight for their sepulchers and the gods of their hearths, for among such numbers perhaps there is not one Roman who has an altar that has belonged to his ancestors or a sepulcher in which their ashes rest. The private soldiers fight and die to advance the wealth and luxury of the great, and they are called masters of the world without having a sod to call their own.


Is it not just that what belongs to the people should be shared by the people? Is a man with no capacity for fighting more useful to his country than a soldier? Is a citizen inferior to a slave? Is an alien, or one who owns some of his country’s soil, the best patriot? You have won by war most of your possessions, and hope to acquire the rest of the habitable globe. But now it is but a hazard whether you gain the rest by bravery or whether by your weakness and discords you are robbed of what you have by your foes. Wherefore, in prospect of such acquisitions, you should if need be spontaneously, and of your own free will, yield up these lands to those who will rear children for the service of the State. Do not sacrifice a great thing while striving for a small, especially as you are to receive no contemptible compensation for your expenditure on the land, in free ownership of five hundred jugera secure forever, and in case you have sons, of two hundred and fifty more for each of them.


The person of a tribune, I acknowledge, is sacred and inviolable, (Note: Tiberius, having deposed one of his colleagues, a tribune, caused offense in that he “had robbed that high office of its dignity.” He then, says Plutarch, “called the commons together again,” and made a speech, from which Plutarch makes this extract, “by way of specimen of the power and strength of his eloquence.” The Langhorne translation.) because he is consecrated to the people, and takes their interests under his protection. But when he deserts those interests, and becomes an oppressor of the people; when he retrenches their privileges, and takes away their liberty of voting; by those acts he deprives himself, for he no longer keeps to the intention of his employment. Otherwise, if a tribune should demolish the Capitol, and burn the docks and naval stores, his person could not be touched. A man who should do such things as those, might still be a tribune, though a vile one; but he who diminishes the privileges of the people, ceases to be a tribune of the people.

Does it not shock you to think that a tribune should be able to imprison a consul, and the people not have it in their power to deprive a tribune of his authority, when he uses it against those who gave it? For the tribunes, as well as the consuls, are elected by the people. Kingly government seems to comprehend all authority in itself, and kings are consecrated with the most awful ceremonies; yet the citizens expelled Tarqin, when his administration became iniquitous, and, for the offense of one man, the ancient government, under whose auspices Rome was erected, was entirely abolished.

What is there in Rome so sacred and venerable as the Vestal Virgins who keep the perpetual fire? Yet if any of them transgress the rules of her order, she is buried alive. For they who are guilty of impiety against the gods, lose that sacred character, which they had only for the sake of the gods. So a tribune who injures the people can be no longer sacred or inviolable on the people’s account. He destroys that power in which alone his strength lay. If it is just for him to be invested with the tribunal authority by a majority of tribes, is it not more just for him to be deposed by the suffrages of them all? What is more sacred and inviolable than the offerings in the temples of the gods? Yet no one pretends to hinder the people from making use of them, or removing them, whenever they please. And, indeed, that the tribune’s office is not inviolable or unremovable, appears from hence, that several have voluntarily laid it down, or been discharged at their own request.

Note: Of the speeches of the Gracchi only a few fragments have come down to us, and these mainly through Plutarch. Doubtless many fine passages existed in those lost books of Livy, over which generations of scholars have shed lamentations. Read more!