pursuit of a definite object, and, as his sending the son of Fulvius Flaccus to the Senate just before his death proves in the teeth of all assertions to the contrary, in his willingness to use his personal influence in order to avoid civil bloodshed. [Sidenote:  Caius compared with Tiberius.] The very dream which Caius told to the people shows that his brother’s spell was still on him, and his telling it, together with his impetuous oratory and his avowed fatalism, militates against the theory that Tiberius was swayed by impulse and sentiment, and he by calculation and reason.  But no doubt he profited by experience of the past.  He had learned how to bide his time, and to think generosity wasted on the murderous crew whom he had sworn to punish.  Pure in life, perfectly prepared for a death to which he considered himself foredoomed, glowing with one fervent passion, he took up his brother’s cause with a double portion of his brother’s spirit, because he had thought more before action, because he had greater natural eloquence, and because being forewarned he was forearmed.

In spite of the labours of recent historians, the legislation of Caius Gracchus is still hard to understand.  Where the original authorities contradict each other, as they often do, probable conjecture is the most which can be attained, and no attempt will be made here to specify what were the measures of the first tribunate of Caius and what of the second. [Sidenote:  The general purpose of the legislation of Caius.] The general scope and tendency of his legislation is clear enough.  It was to overthrow the senatorial government, and in the new government to give the chief share of the executive power to the mercantile class, and the chief share of the legislative power to the country class.  These were his immediate aims.  Probably he meant to keep all the strings he thus set in motion in his own hands, so as to be practically monarch of Rome.  But whether he definitely conceived the idea of monarchy, and, looking beyond his own requirements, pictured to himself a successor at some future time inheriting the authority which he had established, no one can say.  In such vast schemes there must have been much that was merely tentative.  But had he lived and retained his influence we may be sure that the Empire would have been established a century earlier than it was.

[Sidenote:  Date of the tribunate of Caius, December 10, B.C. 124.] Rome was thronged to overflowing by the country class, and the nobles strained every nerve in opposition when Caius was elected tribune.  He was only fourth on the list out of ten, and entered on his office on December 10, B.C. 124.  With a fixed presentiment of his own fate, he felt that, even if he wished to remain passive, the people would not permit him to be so.  He might, he said, have pleaded that he and his young child were the last representatives of a noble line—­of P. Africanus and Tiberius Gracchus—­and that he had lost a brother in the people’s cause; but the people would not have listened to the plea.  It has been said that his mother dissuaded him from his intentions.  But the fragments on which the statement is based are as likely as not spurious; and Cornelia’s fortitude after she had lost both her sons would hardly have been shown by one capable of subordinating public to private interests.