GRACCHUS, TIBERIUS, was born a.c. 163, and was the son of Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, a man of some celebrity in the annals his country, and of Cornelia, daughter of Scipio Africanus.
T. Gracchus tho elder died while his sone were yet young; having twice served the office of consul, and, according to Plutarch, obtained two triumphs. Two anecdotes remain regarding him which seem to exhibit him as a Roman of the old class, affectionate, higb-spirited, and religious. After the death of her husband, Cornelia refused all offers of marriage, and devoted herself to the charge and education of her children, who, as Plutarch tells us, were less the inheritors of manly virtue by heiog sprung from the noblest blood in Rome, than they were its possessors from the careful nurture of their mother Cornelia.
Tiberius served his first campaign in Africa under his uncle Scipio, and having obtained the office of consul's quiestor, we find him next under Mancinus, the unfortunate commander in the Numantino war. His name, which the Numantines respected from remembering his father's virtues, is said to have procured the terms under which Man. cirrus obtained safety for his army ; but the senate on his return was so much displeased at the unfavourable nature of the terms, that they resolved on giving up all the principal officers to the Numantines. By the good-will however of the popular assembly, influenced, as it should seem, by the soldiers and their connections in the lower classes, it was decided to send Mancinua as the real criminal, and to spare the other officers for the sake of Gracchus : treatment of this nature was likely to rouse Gracchus against the senate, and make him the friend of the poor, and accordingly In three years afterwards we find him beginning his short career as a political agitator. He was elected tribune of the Plebs, sae. 133.
The long wars in which the Romans had been engaged led to the introduction of ail enormous number of slaves into Italy. These slaves bad taken the place of the regular inhabitants of the country, and tilled the large estates of the rich to the exclusion of the regular labourers. In Sicily they mustered so strong as to maintain them
selves upwards of two years against their masters, backed by the power of Rome ; and in Italy itself the scene which presented itself to T. Grscchua as he retnrned from Spain was that of a whole country whose only cultivators were foreign slaves. Nor did be find less cause for complaint in the city, crowded as it appears to have been with needy soldiers, whose services had found no remuneration adequate to their expectations.
These causes, acting on a disposition at once ambitious and humane, and aided by the suggestions of a mother, who could not help reminding her sons that she was still called, not mother of the Gracchi; but daughter of Scipio,' and by the general voice of the people expressed In placards and memorials addressed to him as to their preserver and champion, combined in inducing Tiberius Oracchua to attempt the revival of the LIclnian Rogations. In so doing ho appears to have had in view the two grand principles which that law involved, namely, the employment of freemen in preference to slaves, and the more generally recognised principle of the equitable division of the public land.
Three commissioner. were to be appointed to superintend the working of the new law, which Oracchus proposed, if we may trust Plutarch, with the approval of several of the most eminent persons of the time, among whom were Mutius Screvola and Crassus.
Such general interest was excited by the question, that crowds arrived from all parts of the country to support either side ; and there appeared no doubt which way the matter would go when left to the tribes. The aristocracy however secured the veto of M. Octavius, one of the tribunes, and thereby quashed the proceedings whenever the law was brought on, which violent mode of opposition led Gracchus to exercise his veto ou other questions, stop the supplies, and throw the government into the most complete helplessness.