other defying the mob by opposing a distribution of corn; but for the present no one could tell how far he would or could go, and though he had already been made praetor, the Metelli could as yet afford to despise him.  The death of Caius prolonged the Senate’s misrule for twenty years.  Twenty years of shame at home and abroad—­the turpitude of the Jugurthine war—­a second and more stubborn slave revolt in Sicily—­the apparition of the Northern hordes inflicting disaster after disaster upon the Roman armies, which in 105 B.C. culminated in another and more appalling Cannae—­these things had yet to come about before the cup of the Senate’s infamy was full, and before those who had drawn the sword against the Gracchi perished by the sword of Marius, impotent, unpitied, and despised.

* * * * *

CHAPTER IV.

THE JUGURTHINE WAR.

[Sidenote:  Attalus of Pergamus.] Attalus III., the last of that supple dynasty which had managed to thrive on the jealous and often treacherous patronage of Rome, left his dominions at his death to the Republic.  He had begun his reign by massacring all his father’s friends and their families, and ended it as an amateur gardener and dilettante modeller in wax; so perhaps the malice of insanity had something to do with the bequest, if indeed it was not a forgery.  Aristonicus, a natural son of a previous king, Eumenes II., set it at naught and aspired to the throne.

[Sidenote:  Aristonicus usurps the kingdom of Pergamus.] Attalus died in 133, the year of the tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus, when Scipio was besieging Numantia, and the first slave revolt was raging in Sicily.  The Romans had their hands full, and Aristonicus might have so established himself as to give them trouble, had not some of the Asiatic cities headed by Ephesus, and aided by the kings of Cappadocia and Bithynia, opposed him.  He seized Leucae (the modern Lefke) and was expelled by the Ephesians.  But when the Senate found time to send commissioners, he was already in possession of Thyatira, Apollonia, Myndus, Colophon, and Samos.  Blossius, the friend of Gracchus, had come to him, and the civil strife at Rome must have raised his hopes. [Sidenote:  Conduct of Crassus, illustrating Roman rule in the province.] But in the year 131 P. Licinius Crassus Mucianus, the father-in-law of Caius Gracchus, was consul, and was sent to Asia.  He was Pontifex Maximus, rich, high-born, eloquent, and of great legal knowledge; and from his intimacy with the Gracchi and Scipio he must have been an unusually favourable specimen of the aristocrat of the day.  And this is what he did in Asia.  He was going to besiege Leucae, and having seen two pieces of timber at Elaea, sent for the larger of them to make a battering ram.  The builder, who was the chief magistrate of the town, sent him the smaller piece as being the most suitable, and Crassus had him stripped and scourged.