Gaius Gracchus

Gaius Gracchus (601-633) was very different from his brother, who was about nine years older.  Like the latter, he had no relish for vulgar pleasures and vulgar pursuits; he was a man of thorough culture and a brave soldier; he had served with distinction before Numantia under his brother-in-law, and afterwards in Sardinia.  But in talent, in character, and above all in passion he was decidedly superior to Tiberius.  The clearness and self-possession, which the young man afterwards displayed amidst the pressure of all the varied labours requisite for the practical carrying out of his numerous laws, betokened his genuine statesmanly talent; as the passionate devotedness faithful even to death, with which his intimate friends clung to him, evinced the loveable nature of that noble mind.  The discipline of suffering which he had undergone, and his compulsory reserve during the last nine years, augmented his energy of purpose and action; the indignation repressed within the depths of his breast only glowed there with an intensified fervour against the party which had disorganized his country and murdered his brother.  By virtue of this fearful vehemence of temperament he became the foremost orator that Rome ever had; without it, we should probably have been able to reckon him among the first statesmen of all times.  Among the few remains of his recorded orations several are, even in their present condition, of heart-stirring power;(7) and we can well understand how those who heard or even merely read them were carried away by the impetuous torrent of his words.  Yet, great master as he was of speech, he was himself not unfrequently mastered by anger, so that the utterance of the brilliant speaker became confused or faltering.  It was the true image of his political acting and suffering.  In the nature of Gaius there was no vein, such as his brother had, of that somewhat sentimental but very short-sighted and confused good-nature, which would have desired to change the mind of a political opponent by entreaties and tears; with full assurance he entered on the career of revolution and strove to reach the goal of vengeance.  “To me too,” his mother wrote to him, “nothing seems finer and more glorious than to retaliate on an enemy, so far as it can be done without the country’s ruin.  But if this is not possible, then may our enemies continue and remain what they are, a thousand times rather than that our country should perish.”  Cornelia knew her son; his creed was just the reverse.  Vengeance he would wreak on the wretched government, vengeance at any price, though he himself and even the commonwealth were to be ruined by it—­the presentiment, that fate would overtake him as certainly as his brother, drove him only to make haste like a man mortally wounded who throws himself on the foe.  The mother thought more nobly; but the son—­ with his deeply provoked, passionately excited, thoroughly Italian nature—­has been more lamented than blamed by posterity, and posterity has been right in its judgment.