great majority of the members, headed by P. Cornelius Scipio
Nasica the chief pontiff, only waited for a chance of intervening
with effect. They had armed their slaves and dependants,
meaning to use force. The voting was again stopped by a riot;
the tribunes fled. Then Nasica and his band of furious senators
led their followers into the Capitol yard and fell upon the ill-pre-
pared Gracchans, of whom with clubs and stones they slew 300 or
more, among them Tiberius Gracchus. Nor did religious senti-
ment respect the corpses of the dead. They were cast into the
river. Roman politics had come to this pass, that a precedent
had been set for massacre as a means of party-strife. And it was
the rich landlords that had set this precedent, in defence of their
privileges against a movement for reform.

322. The massacre was followed up by the appointment of
a judicial commission to inquire into the complicity of survivors
in the designs of Gracchus. Some are said to have been outlawed
by this court. His Greek tutor Blossius had friends on the com-
mission, and escaped. But he left Rome and went to join the
rebellion in Asia. It is clear that the nobles did not feel strong
enough to defy public feeling. Men mourned for Gracchus, and
shewed such hatred for Nasica, that a pretext was found for send-
ing him on a mission to Asia, where he soon after died. Nor were
the new laws directly attacked. The vacant place on the land-
commission was filled by the election of a friend of Gracchus,
P. Licinius Crassus. In 132 Scipio Aemilianus returned from
Spain. An opportunity was found to draw from him an opinion
on the Gracchan affair. He plainly disapproved his brother-in-
law's projects and condoned his murder. We are told that the
common people were disgusted with him. This seems to indicate
that the Sempronian land-law was really a popular measure, and
the Roman mob perhaps still capable of some genuine land-hunger.
Anyhow Scipio's attitude made him the associate of the violent
and selfish nobles, the tool of a clique with which he could have
little or no sympathy.

Such in brief is the story of Tiberius Gracchus the Reformer,
the record of which leaves only too many points open to serious
doubt.

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