I. TIBEMUS SEMPIZONIUS GRAccurs was b. about 168 Ra, and was educated with great care by his excellent mother (his father having died while he was yet very young). He first saw military service under his brother-in-law, Scipio Africanus the younger, whom he accompanied to Africa. He was present at the capture of Carthage, and is said to have been the first of the Romans to scale the walls. In 137 B.C., he acted as quustor to the army of the consul Mancinus in Spain, where the remembrance of his father's good faith and clemency was so fresh, after forty years'-interval, that the Numan tines would treat with no other Roman but the son of their former benefactor. He was thus enabled to save from utter destruction an army of 20,000 Romans, who had been defeated, and were at the mercy of the Numantines. But the peace was considered by the aristocratic party at Rome as disgraceful to the national honor, and was repudiated, Mancinus being stripped naked, and sent back to the Numantines, that the treaty might thus be rendered void. Disgust and disappointment at this result are said by some, though without good reason, to have determined Gracchus to espouse the cause of the people against the nobles; but a much more feasible ground for his conduct is to be found in the oppressed state of the commons at the time. Being elected tribune, he endeavored to reimpose the agrarian law of Licinius Stolo, and after violent opposition on the part of the aristocratic party, who had bribed his colleague 31. Octavius Cmcina,
he succeeded in passing a bill to that effect. For a detailed account of the measure, see AGRARIAN Law.) Tiberius Gracelms,,his brother Caius, and his father-in-law Ap. Claudius, were appointed triumvirs to enforce its provisions. Meantime, Attains, king of Pergamus, died, and bequeathed all his wealth to the Roman people. Gracchus therefore proposed that this should be divided among the poor, to enable them to pro cure agricultural implements, and to stock their newly acquired farms. It is said that he also intended to extend the franchise, and to receive Italian allies as Roman citizens. He also diminished the time which citizens were required to serve in the army. But fortune turned against the good tribune. He was accused of having violated the sacred character of the tribuneship•by the deposition of Cmcina, and the fickle people in large numbers deserted their champion and benefactor. At the next election for the tribune ship, his enemies used all their efforts to oust him; and a violent scuffle having arisen between the opposing factions: Gracchus was slain, along with upwards of 300 others. His surviving friends were imprisoned, exiled, or put to death.