Description
In a carefully written and edited essay of 2-3 pages, compare and contrast the accounts of the last days of Gaius Gracchus as recorded by Appian and Plutarch. Pay special attention to differences and similarities of fact, to differences in the kinds of details the two writers emphasize, to dramatic devices or expressions that they use to make the story interesting, and to the ways in which the two writers show sympathy with, or disapproval of, the actions of Gracchus and other characters.
Passage A: Appian, Civil Wars 1.24-26 (written mid-second century CE):
24 Having lost the favour of the rabble, Gracchus sailed for Africa in company with Fulvius Flaccus, who, after his consulship, had been chosen tribune for the same reasons as Gracchus himself. It had been decided to send a colony to Africa on account of its reputed fertility, and these men had been expressly chosen the founders of it in order to get them out of the way for a while, so that the Senate might have a respite from demagogism. They marked out the city for the colony on the place where Carthage had formerly stood, disregarding the fact that Scipio, when he destroyed it, had devoted it with solemn curses to sheep-pasturage forever. They assigned 6000 colonists to this place, instead of the smaller number fixed by law, in order further to curry favour with the people thereby. When they returned to Rome they invited the 6000 from the whole of Italy. The functionaries who were still in Africa laying out the city wrote home that wolves had pulled up and scattered the boundary marks made by Gracchus and Fulvius, and the soothsayers considered this an ill omen for the colony. So the Senate summoned the assembly, in which it was proposed to repeal the law concerning this colony. When Gracchus and Fulvius saw their failure in this matter they were furious, and declared that the Senate had lied about the wolves. The boldest of the plebeians joined them, carrying daggers, and proceeded to the Capitol, where the assembly was to be held in reference to the colony.
25 Now the people had come together already, and Fulvius had begun speaking about the business in hand, when Gracchus arrived at the Capitol attended by a body-guard of his partisans. Conscience-stricken by what he knew about the extraordinary plans on foot he turned aside from the meeting-place of the assembly, passed into the portico, and walked about waiting to see what would happen. Just then a plebeian named Antyllus, who was sacrificing in the portico, saw him in this disturbed state, laid his hand upon him, either because he had heard or suspected something, or was moved to speak to him for some other reason, and begged him to spare his country. Gracchus, still more disturbed, and startled like one detected in a crime, gave the man a sharp look. Then one of his party, although no signal had been displayed or order given, inferred merely from the angry glance that Gracchus cast upon Antyllus that the time for action had come, and thought that he should do a favour to Gracchus by striking the first blow. So he drew his dagger and slew Antyllus. A cry was raised, the dead body was seen in the midst of the crowd, and all who were outside fled from the temple in fear of a like fate. Gracchus went into the assembly desiring to exculpate himself of the deed, but nobody would so much as listen to him. All turned away from him as from one stained with blood. So both he and Flaccus were at their wits’ end and, having lost through this hasty act the chance of accomplishing what they wished, they hastened to their homes, and their partisans with them. The rest of the crowd occupied the forum after midnight as though some calamity were impending, and Opimius the consul who was staying in the city, ordered an armed force to gather in the Capitol at daybreak, and sent heralds to convoke the Senate. He took his own station in the temple of Castor and Pollux in the centre of the city and there he awaited events.
26 When these arrangements had been made the Senate summoned Gracchus and Flaccus from their homes to the senate-house to defend themselves. But they ran out armed toward the Aventine hill, hoping that if they could seize it first the Senate would agree to some terms with them. As they ran through the city they offered freedom to the slaves, but none listened to them. With such forces as they had, however, they occupied and fortified the temple of Diana, and sent Quintus, the son of Flaccus, to the Senate seeking to come to an arrangement and to live in harmony. The Senate replied that they should lay down their arms, come to the senate-house, and tell them what they wanted, or else send no more messengers. When they sent Quintus a second time the consul Opimius arrested him, as being no longer an ambassador after he had been warned, and at the same time sent his armed men against the Gracchans.
Gracchus fled across the river by the wooden bridge with one slave to a grove, and there, being on the point of arrest, he presented his throat to the slave. Flaccus took refuge in the workshop of an acquaintance. As his pursuers did not know which house he was in they threatened to burn the whole row. The man who had given shelter to the suppliant hesitated to point him out, but directed another man to do so. Flaccus was seized and put to death. The heads of Gracchus and Flaccus were carried to Opimius, and he gave their weight in gold to those who brought them, but the people plundered their houses. Opimius then arrested their fellow-conspirators, cast them into prison, and ordered that they should be strangled; but he allowed Quintus, the son of Flaccus, to choose his own mode of death. After this a •lustration of the city was performed for the bloodshed, and the Senate ordered the building of a temple to Concord in the forum.
Passage B: Plutarch, Life of Gaius Gracchus 11-17 (written early second century CE):
11 In Africa, moreover, in connection with the planting of a colony on the site of Carthage, to which colony Gaius gave the name Junonia (that is to say, in Greek, Heraea), there are said to have been many prohibitory signs from the gods. For the leading standard was caught by a gust of wind, and though the bearer clung to it with all his might, it was broken into pieces; the sacrificial victims lying on the altars were scattered by a hurricane and dispersed beyond the boundary-marks in the plan of the city, and the boundary-marks themselves were set upon by wolves, who tore them up and carried them a long way off. 2 Notwithstanding this, Gaius settled and arranged everything in seventy days all told, and then returned to Rome, because he learned that Fulvius was being hard pressed by Drusus, and because matters there required his presence. For Lucius Opimius, a man of oligarchical principles and influential in the senate, who had previously failed in a candidacy for the consulship (when Gaius had brought forward Fannius and supported his canvass for the office), 3 now had the aid and assistance of many, and it was expected that he would be consul, and that as consul he would try to pursue down Gaius, whose influence was already somewhat on the wane, and with whose peculiar measures the people had become sated, because the leaders who courted their favour were many and the senate readily yielded to them.
12 On returning to Rome, in the first place Gaius changed his residence from the Palatine hill to the region adjoining the forum, which he thought more democratic, since most of the poor and lowly had come to live there; in the next place, he promulgated the rest of his laws, intending to get the people’s vote upon them. But when a throng came together from all parts of Italy for his support, the senate prevailed upon the consul Fannius to drive out of the city all who were not Romans. 2 Accordingly, a strange and unusual proclamation was made, to the effect that none of the allies and friends of Rome should appear in the city during those days; whereupon Gaius published a counter edict in which he denounced the consul, and promised the allies his support, in case they should remain there. He did not, however, give them his support, but when he saw one of his comrades and guest-friends dragged off by the lictors of Fannius, he passed by without giving him any help, either because he feared to give a proof that his power was already on the decline, or because he was unwilling, as he said, by his own acts to afford his enemies the occasions which they sought for a conflict at close quarters.
3 Moreover, it chanced that he had incurred the anger of his colleagues in office, and for the following reason. The people were going to enjoy an exhibition of gladiators in the forum, and most of the magistrates had constructed seats for the show round about, and were offering them for hire. Gaius ordered them to take down these seats, in order that the poor might be able to enjoy the spectacle from those places without paying hire. 4 But since no one paid any attention to his command, he waited till the night before the spectacle, and then, taking all the workmen whom he had under his orders in public contracts, he pulled down the seats, and when day came he had the place all clear for the people. For this proceeding the populace thought him a man, but his colleagues were annoyed and thought him reckless and violent. It was believed also that this conduct cost him his election to the tribunate for the third time, since, although he got a majority of the votes, his colleagues were unjust and fraudulent in their proclamation and returns. This, however, was disputed. 5 But he took his failure overmuch to heart, and what is more, it is said, with more boldness than was fitting, that they were laughing with sardonic laughter, and were not aware of the great darkness that enveloped them in consequence of his public measures.
13 The enemies of Gaius also effected the election of Opimius as consul, and then proceeded to revoke many of the laws which Gaius had secured and to meddle with the organization of the colony at Carthage. This was by way of irritating Gaius, that he might furnish ground for resentment, and so be got rid of. At first he endured all this patiently, but at last, under the instigations of his friends, and especially of Fulvius, he set out to gather a fresh body of partisans for opposition to the consul. 2 Here, we are told, his mother also took active part in his seditious measures, by secretly hiring from foreign parts and sending to Rome men who were ostensibly reapers; for to this matter there are said to have been obscure allusions in her letters to her son. Others, however, say that Cornelia was very much displeased with these activities of her son.
3 Be that as it may, on the day when Opimius and his supporters were going to annul the laws, the Capitol had been occupied by both factions since earliest morning, and after the consul had offered sacrifice, one of his servants, Quintus Antyllius, as he was carrying from one place to another the entrails of the victims, said to the partisans of Fulvius: “Make way for honest citizens, ye rascals!” Some say, too, that along with this speech Antyllius bared his arm and waved it with an insulting gesture. 4 At any rate he was killed at once and on the spot, stabbed with large writing styles said to have been made for just such a purpose. The multitude were completely confused by the murder, but it produced an opposite state of mind in the leaders of the two factions. Gaius was distressed, and upbraided his followers for having given their enemies ground for accusing them which had long been desired; but Opimius, as though he had got something for which he was waiting, was elated, and urged the people on to vengeance.
14 A shower of rain fell just then, and the assembly was dissolved; but early next morning the consul called the senate together indoors and proceeded to transact business, while others placed the body of Antyllius without covering upon a bier, and carried it, as they had agreed to do, through the forum and past the senate-house, with wailings and lamentations. Opimius knew what was going on, but pretended to be surprised, so that even the senators went out into the forum. 2 After the bier had been set down in the midst of the throng, the senators began to inveigh against what they called a heinous and monstrous crime, but the people were moved to hatred and abuse of the oligarchs, who, they said, after murdering Tiberius Gracchus on the Capitol with their own hands, tribune that he was, had actually flung away his dead body besides; whereas Antyllius, a mere servant, 3 who perhaps had suffered more than he deserved, but was himself chiefly to blame for it, had been laid out in the forum, and was surrounded by the Roman senate, which shed tears and shared in the obsequies of a hireling fellow, to the end that sole remaining champion of the people might be done away with. Then the senators went back into the senate-house, where they formally enjoined upon the consul Opimius to save the city as best he could, and to put down the tyrants.
4 The consul therefore ordered the senators to take up arms, and every member of the equestrian order was notified to bring next morning two servants fully armed; Fulvius, on the other hand, made counter preparations and got together a rabble, but Gaius, as he left the forum, stopped in front of his father’s statue, gazed at it for a long time without uttering a word, then burst into tears, and with a groan departed. 5 Many of those who saw this were moved to pity Gaius; they reproached themselves for abandoning and betraying him, and went to his house, and spent the night at his door, though not in the same manner as those who were guarding Fulvius. For these passed the whole time in noise and shouting, drinking, and boasting of what they would do, Fulvius himself being the first to get drunk, and saying and doing much that was unseemly for a man of his years; 6 but the followers of Gaius, feeling that they faced a public calamity, kept quiet and were full of concern for the future, and passed the night sleeping and keeping watch by turns.
15 When day came, Fulvius was with difficulty roused from his drunken sleep by his partisans, who armed themselves with the spoils of war about his house, which he had taken after a victory over the Gauls during his consulship, and with much threatening and shouting went to seize the Aventine hill. Gaius, on the other hand, was unwilling to arm himself, but went forth in his toga, as though on his way to the forum, with only a short dagger on his person. 2 As he was going out at the door, his wife threw herself in his way, and with one arm round her husband and the other round their little son, said: “Not to the rostra, O Gaius, do I now send you forth, as formerly, to served as tribune and law-giver, nor yet to a glorious war, where, should you die (and all men must die), you would at all events leave me an honoured sorrow; but you are exposing yourself to the murderers of Tiberius, and you do well to go unarmed, that you may suffer rather than inflict wrong; but your death will do the state no good. The worst has at last prevailed; 3 by violence and the sword men’s controversies are now decided. If your brother had only fallen at Numantia, his dead body would have been given back to us by terms of truce; but as it is, perhaps I too shall have to supplicate some river or sea to reveal to me at last your body in its keeping. Why, pray, should men longer put faith in laws or gods, after the murder of Tiberius?” 4 While Licinia was thus lamenting, Gaius gently freed himself from her embrace and went away without a word, accompanied by his friends. Licinia eagerly sought to clutch his robe, but sank to the ground and lay there a long time speechless, until her servants lifted her up unconscious and carried her away to the house of her brother Crassus.
16 When all were assembled together, Fulvius, yielding to the advice of Gaius, sent the younger of his sons with a herald’s wand into the forum. The young man was very fair to look upon; and now, in a decorous attitude, modestly, and with tears in his eyes, he addressed conciliatory words to the consul and the senate. 2 Most of his audience, then, were not disinclined to accept his terms of peace; but Opimius declared that the petitioners ought not to try to persuade the senate by word of messenger; they should rather come down and surrender themselves for trial, like citizens amenable to the laws, and then beg for mercy; he also told the young man plainly to come back again on these terms or not come back at all. 3 Gaius, accordingly, as we are told, was willing to come and try to persuade the senate; but no one else agreed with him, and so Fulvius sent his son again to plead in their behalf a before. But Opimius, who was eager to join battle, at once seized the youth and put him under guard, and then advanced on the party of Fulvius with numerous men-at?arms and Cretan archers. 4 And it was the archers who, by discharging their arrows and wounding their opponents, were most instrumental in throwing them into confusion. After the rout had taken place, Fulvius fled refuge into an unused bath, where he was shortly discovered and slain, together with his elder son. Gaius, however, was not seen to take any part in the battle, but in great displeasure at what was happening he withdrew into the temple of Diana. There he was intended to kill with himself, but was prevented by his most trusty companions, Pomponius and Licinius; for they were at hand, and took away his sword, and urged him to flight again. 5 Then, indeed, as we are told, he sank upon his knees, and with hands outstretched towards the goddess prayed that the Roman people, in requital for their great ingratitude and treachery, might never cease to be in servitude; for most of them were manifestly changing sides, now that proclamation of immunity had been made.
17 So then, as Gaius fled, his foes pressed hard upon him and were overtaking him at the wooden bridge over the Tiber, but his two friends told him to go on, while they themselves withstood his pursuers, and, fighting there at the head of the bridge, would allow no man to pass, until they were killed. 2 Gaius had with him in his flight a single servant, by name Philocrates; and though all the spectators, as at a race, urged Gaius on to greater speed, not a man came to his aid, or even consented to furnish him with a horse when he asked for one, for his pursuers were pressing close upon him. He barely succeeded in escaping into a sacred grove of the Furies, and there fell by the hand of Philocrates, who then slew himself upon his master. 3 According to some writers, however, both were taken alive by the enemy, and because the servant had thrown his arms about his master, no one was able to strike the master until the slave had first been dispatched by the blows of many. Someone cut off the head of Gaius, we are told, and was carrying it along, but was robbed of it by a certain friend of Opimius, Septimuleius; for proclamation had been made at the beginning of the battle that an equal weight of gold would be paid the men who brought the head of Gaius or Fulvius. 4 So Septimuleius stuck the head of Gaius on a spear and brought it to Opimius, and when it was placed in a balance it weighed seventeen pounds and two thirds, since Septimuleius, besides showing himself to be a scoundrel, had also perpetrated a fraud; for he had taken out the brain and poured melted lead in its place. But those who brought the head of Fulvius were of the obscurer sort, and therefore got nothing. 5 The bodies of Gaius and Fulvius and of the other slain were thrown into the Tiber, and they numbered three thousand; their property was sold and the proceeds paid into the public treasury. Moreover, their wives were forbidden to go into mourning, and Licinia, the wife of Gaius, was also deprived of her marriage portion. Most cruel of all, however, was the treatment of the younger son of Fulvius, who had neither lifted a hand against the nobles nor been present at the fighting, but had come to effect a truce before the battle and had been arrested; after the battle he was slain. 6 However, what vexed the people more than this or anything else was the erection of a temple of Concord by Opimius; for it was felt that he was priding himself and exulting and in a manner celebrating a triumph in view of all this slaughter of citizens. Therefore at night, beneath the inscription on the temple, somebody carved this verse:— “A work of mad discord produces a temple of Concord.”
