Roma.The novel of ancient Rome

FRIEND OF THE GRACCHI

146 B.C.

“Daughter, mother, wife, widow…”

As she enunciated each word, Cornelia brought together a fingertip from each opposing hand-an orator’s gesture she had seen her father perform. Cornelia had been quite young when Scipio died, but he had made an immense impression on her nonetheless, and many of his gestures and facial expressions, and even some of his turns of phrase, lived on in her. She had also inherited her father’s famous beauty. Now in her late thirties, Cornelia was a strikingly handsome woman. Her chestnut hair gleamed red and gold as it reflected the bright, dappled sunlight of the garden.

“Daughter, mother, wife, widow,” she repeated. “Which is a woman’s greatest role in life? What do you think, Menenia?”

“I think…” Her friend smiled a bit shyly. Menenia was the same age as Cornelia, and like Cornelia, a widow. Though not as beautiful, she comported herself with such grace that heads were as likely to turn in her direction as in Cornelia’s when the two entered a room together. “I think, Cornelia, that you have left out a category.”

“What would that be?”

“Lover.” With one hand, Menenia touched the talisman that hung from her neck, an ancient fascinum inherited from her grandfather. With her other hand, she gently touched the arm of the man who sat next to her, and the two exchanged a long, meaningful look.

Blossius was a philosopher, an Italian born in Cumae. With his long, graying hair and neatly trimmed beard, he exuded an air of dignity to match Menenia’s. Cornelia was moved by the special spark between her dearest friend and the tutor of her children. Here were two mature adults, long past the age of heady romance, who had nonetheless found in each other not just a companion but a soul mate.

“What prompts you to pose this question?” asked Blossius. As a pedagogue of the Stoic school, he tended to question a question rather than answer it.

Cornelia shut her eyes and lifted her face to the warm sunlight. It was a quiet day on the Palatine; she heard the music of birdsong from the rooftops. “Idle musings. I was thinking that Menenia and I both lost our fathers at an early age. And we’re both widows, having married, and buried, husbands considerably older than ourselves. After my father’s death, relatives arranged for me to wed dear old Tiberius Gracchus. And you were the second wife of Lucius Pinarius, were you not?”

“Third, actually,” said Menenia. “The old dear was looking more for a caretaker than a broodmare.”

“Yet he gave you a wonderful son, young Lucius.”

“Yes. And Tiberius gave you many children.”

“Twelve, to be exact. Each was precious to me. Alas, that only three survived!”

“But what remarkable children those three are,” said Menenia, “thanks in no small part to their instruction from Blossius.” She squeezed her lover’s arm. “Your daughter Sempronia is already happily married, and the world expects great things of your sons Tiberius and Gaius.”

Cornelia nodded. “I think we’ve answered the question I posed, at least regarding myself. Since I no longer have a living father or husband-and no time for a lover! — motherhood is my highest role. My achievement will be my sons. I intend for them to do such great things that when my life is over, people will say not that I was the daughter of Scipio Africanus, but the mother of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus.”

Blossius pursed his lips. “A noble aspiration. But must a woman exist only through the men in her life-fathers, husbands, sons…lovers?” He cast an affectionate look at Menenia. “Stoicism teaches that each man is valuable in and of himself, whatever his station in life. Citizen or slave, consul or foot soldier-all contain a unique spark of the divine essence. But what of women? Do they not also possess intrinsic value, above and beyond whatever role they play in relationship to the men in their lives?”

Cornelia laughed. “Dear Blossius, only a Stoic would dare to utter such a radical notion! A generation ago, you might have been exiled merely for proposing such an idea.”

“Perhaps,” said Blossius. “But a generation ago, it’s unlikely that two women would have been allowed to sit alone and unchaperoned in a garden discussing ideas with a philosopher.”

“Even nowadays, many an old-fashioned Roman would be appalled to overhear this conversation,” said Menenia. “Yet here we sit. The world changes.”

“The world is always changing,” agreed Blossius. “Sometimes for the worse.”

“Then it will be up to our children to change it for the better,” declared Cornelia.

Menenia smiled. “And which of your sons will do more to change the world?”

“Hard to say. They’re so different. Tiberius is so serious, so earnest for an eighteen-year-old, mature beyond his years. Now that he’s a soldier, off fighting those poor Carthaginians, or what’s left of them, I hope his outlook doesn’t become even more somber. Little Gaius is only nine, but what a different fellow he is! I fear he may be rather too impulsive and hot-tempered.”

“But very sure of himself,” said Blossius, “especially for a boy his age. As their tutor, I can say that both brothers are remarkably self-confident-a trait I attribute to their mother.”

“While I attribute it to their grandfather, though he was dead long before either was born. How I wish the boys could have known him, and that I could have known him longer than I did. Still, I’ve done all I can to instill in the boys a deep respect for their grandfather’s accomplishments. They bear the name Gracchus proudly, and rightly so, but they are also obliged to live up to the standards of Scipio Africanus.”

Menenia sighed. “Well, as for my Lucius, I only hope he comes back alive and unharmed from Cato’s war.” This was the name which many in Roma had given to the renewed campaign against Carthage. Cato himself had not lived to see the outbreak of the war, but he had never ceased to agitate for it. For years, no matter what the subject-road building, military commands, sewer repairs-he ended every speech in the Senate with the same phrase: “And in conclusion…Carthage must be destroyed!” Men laughed at his dogged obsession, but in the end, from beyond the grave, Cato had prevailed. It now seemed that his dream would be realized. According to the most recent dispatches from Africa, Roman forces were laying siege to Carthage, whose defenders could not hope to resist them for long.

Cornelia blinked and shaded her eyes. The garden had suddenly grown too hot and the sunlight too bright. The singing birds had fallen silent. “They say it’s no longer a question of if Carthage is destroyed-”

“But when,” said Blossius.

“And when that happens-”

“Carthage shall be the second city in a matter of months to suffer such a fate at Roma’s hands.” The philosopher resided in Cornelia’s house, and the two saw each other almost daily; their thoughts often ran side by side, like horses hitched together. “When General Mummius captured Corinth, there was rejoicing in the streets of Roma.”

“And weeping in the streets of Corinth!” Cornelia shook her head. “Every male citizen killed, every woman enslaved! One of the most sophisticated and opulent cities in all Greece, obliterated by Roman arms.”

Blossius raised an eyebrow. “‘An example to anyone who would dare to challenge our supremacy,’ according to Mummius.”

“Temples were desecrated. Priceless works of art were destroyed by his rioting soldiers. Even the most anti-Greek reactionaries in Roma were embarrassed by Mummius’s barbarism-”

Cornelia abruptly fell silent. She lifted one ear to the sky. In place of birdsong, another sound now floated on the air. “Do you hear? A commotion of some sort.”

“From the Forum?” said Menenia.

“Closer than that, I think. Myron!” A young slave sitting on the ground nearby scrambled to his feet. Cornelia sent him to find out what was going on. While they awaited his return, the three of them sat silently, sharing the same unease. A commotion meant news of some sort. News could be good, or bad…

At last Myron returned, out of breath but smiling. “Mistress, tremendous news from Africa! Carthage has been taken. The war is over! A ship landed at Ostia this morning, and the messengers have just arrived in Roma. That’s all I’ve found out so far, but if you wish, I can run down to the Forum.”

Menenia began to weep. Blossius put his arms around her. The two seemed oblivious of Cornelia. Watching them, she suddenly felt very alone. The heat of the garden made her feel faint. The bright sunlight brought tears to her eyes.

“Yes, Myron, go and see what else you can discover. Perhaps there’s some word about…Roman casualties.”

“At once, mistress.” Myron spun about, and abruptly collided with a man who was just stepping into the garden.

Cornelia shielded her eyes from the sun. She squinted at the newcomer, then let out a cry. “Nicomedes! Is it really you?”

The man was one of Tiberius’s slaves. He had accompanied his master to Carthage.

“But Nicomedes, what are you doing here? Why aren’t you still with Tiberius?” Despite the heat, Cornelia shivered.

“Rather than speak for my master, my master may speak for himself.” Nicomedes smiled and produced a covered wax tablet from the pouch he carried.

“A letter? From Tiberius?”

“Inscribed by my own hand amid the smoking ruins of Carthage, as dictated by your son, mistress, who is not only alive and well, but a hero of the Roman legions.”

“A hero?”

“As you shall understand when you read his letter.”

Cornelia nodded. She felt strangely calm. “Myron, go and fetch young Gaius. He should be present to hear his brother’s letter read aloud. Blossius, will you do it?” She handed him the tablet. “My hands are shaking, and I don’t think I could make sense of the letters.”

A moment later, Gaius appeared, running ahead of Myron. He was a handsome boy, the very image of his grandfather. “Is it true, mother? Carthage is taken, and there’s a letter from Tiberius?”

“Yes, Gaius. Sit here beside me while Blossius reads it.”

The philosopher cleared his throat. “‘To my beloved mother, daughter of the great Africanus: I write these words to you from the city my grandfather once conquered, which has just been conquered again by Roman arms. It shall never be conquered a third time. From this day forward, Carthage shall no longer exist.

“‘Along with this letter, Nicomedes also brings a memento from me. It is the mural crown, which I was awarded for having been the first soldier to scale the enemy walls.’”

From his pouch, Nicomedes produced a crown made of silver and molded to resemble a crenellated wall with towers, such as might encircle a city. He presented the crown to Cornelia. “Your son received it in a public ceremony before the troops, and wore it at a place of honor at the victory feast. He sent it home with me, so that his mother might be the first in Roma to see it.”

“The first to scale the walls!” whispered Gaius, gazing at the crown in his mother’s hands. “The first Roman inside Carthage! Can you imagine how dangerous that must have been?”

Cornelia could well imagine, and the thought made her lightheaded. But she managed a smile and placed the crown atop Gaius’s head. It was too big for him and slipped over his eyes. Everyone laughed. Gaius angrily pushed the crown from his head. It fell to the paving stones with a clatter.

“That’s not funny, Mother! The crown wasn’t meant for me!”

“Hush, Gaius!” With a sigh, Cornelia bent down to retrieve the crown and placed it on her lap. “Let us hear the rest of your brother’s letter. Blossius, please continue.”

“‘For your friend Menenia, I also have good news: Her son Lucius fought bravely in the battle, killed many of the enemy, and sustained no injuries.”

“Thank the gods!” cried Menenia. She reached for Blossius’s hand, but he was distracted by the letter. He peered at it intently, reading ahead. His face was grim.

“Go on, Blossius,” said Cornelia. “What else does Tiberius write?”

“Only…a bit of description…of the battle itself. Nothing of a personal nature.”

“Very well. Let’s hear it.”

“I’m not sure I should read this aloud, in front of the boy. Or in front of you, for that matter. I suppose it’s a mark of Tiberius’s deep respect for you, that he should write to his mother as candidly as he might have written to his late father…”

“What were you just saying, Blossius, about the worthiness of women?”

“It’s not a question of merit, but of…delicacy.”

“Nonsense, Blossius. If you won’t read it aloud, I will.” Cornelia put aside the mural crown, rose to her feet, and took the tablet from him.

“‘As for Carthage,’” she read, “‘the ghost of Cato may finally rest: The city, which was as old as Roma, is now utterly destroyed. The harbor is demolished, the houses burned, the altars for human sacrifice reduced to rubble. The gardens have been uprooted. The grand mosaics of the public squares have been flooded with pools of blood.

“‘The men were slaughtered, as long as we had strength to slaughter them; the few who survive will become slaves. So far as I know, every woman was raped, regardless of her age or status. Many were killed, though they screamed for mercy; such was the frenzy for destruction that overtook the victors. The women and men who survived will be separated by sex and sold in slave markets hundreds of miles apart, so that no Carthaginian male and female may ever copulate again, and thus the race will become extinct. Before they are sold, their tongues will be removed, so that their language, and even the names of their gods, will vanish from the earth.

“‘The earth itself will be made barren. Salt is being plowed into the soil surrounding the city, so that no crops can be grown for a generation. Salt was the precious substance that gave birth to Roma long ago-so Blossius taught me-so it is fitting that salt shall seal the burial of Carthage.

“‘When Alexander conquered Persia, he chose to leave the city of Babylon intact and to make its people his subjects; for his clemency, he was exalted by gods and men. We have followed an older example, that of the merciless Greeks who sacked the city of Troy and left only ruins behind. The Greek playwrights tell of many misfortunes that subsequently befell the victorious Greeks-Ajax, Ulysses, Agamemnon, and the rest. I pray the gods will favor what we have done to Carthage, and will grant a righteous destiny to the Roman people, who have done this fearful thing for the glory of Jupiter.’”

Her hands trembling, Cornelia put down the tablet.

“If only I could have been there!” said Gaius, his eyes bright with excitement. “What a glorious day it must have been! And now it shall never happen again, because Carthage is gone, and I was too young to be there, and there’ll never be another war with her. I can hardly wait for Tiberius to come home and tell me more about it.”

Menenia lowered her eyes.

“War is the way of the world, and always will be,” said Blossius quietly. “Clearly, the gods of Roma were greater than those of Carthage. For that, we must be thankful. And yet…I am fearful for Roma’s future. How astute is Tiberius, when he points to the example of the Greeks against Troy. I am reminded of the Greek hero Achilles, who was very nearly invincible; yet, when he desecrated the corpse of the Trojan Hector, the gods frowned upon his hubris and withdrew their protection, and Achilles died like any other mortal on the battlefield.

“Roma has entered a new era. With the destruction of Corinth, the Romans’ respect for Greek culture degenerated to wanton looting. With the destruction of Carthage, the Romans are without rival in the Mediterranean. But how will Roma bear the responsibilities of power and wealth unprecedented in the history of the world? We must pray that the gods will give Roma wise men to lead her into the future-and wise women to nurture those men as boys!”

Blossius, Menenia, and Cornelia each turned their eyes to young Gaius. Inspired by visions of the carnage at Carthage, he had dared to pick up the mural crown and was testing its fit on his brow again, oblivious of their scrutiny.

133 B.C.

“Tiberius is headed for trouble, Mother. Serious trouble. He has no idea of what he’s up against. I want nothing to do with it.” Lucius Pinarius, who had the auburn hair and bright green eyes typical of many Pinarii, took a bite of boiled cabbage marinated in garum. The dish, served cold, was a family favorite for a hot midsummer day.

Blossius helped himself to a bit of the cabbage as well, though it tended to give him indigestion. Though all Cornelia’s children were now grown, Blossius still resided at her house, but he spent much of his time here at house of Menenia, which was only a few steps away on the Palatine. It was unthinkable that Menenia and Blossius-a Roman patrician and a philosopher from Cumae-should ever marry, but their relationship had stood the test of time. The widow and the Stoic were growing gray together.

Menenia ate none of the cabbage. She had no appetite during hot weather; it was her lament that during the entire month of Sextilis she could eat nothing at all. A slave behind her wafted a peacock fan to stir the languid air of the garden.

“Tiberius Gracchus has always been your friend, Lucius,” she said. “You should be happy for him. You might have looked upon his election to the tribunate as an opportunity for yourself. Instead, over the last year, you’ve deliberately avoided him. What about this legislation he managed to enact, setting up a commission to redistribute farmland? You could have served on that commission-”

“If I wanted to end my career before it’s begun! The whole thing will end in disaster.”

“Not necessarily,” said Blossius. “To be sure, Tiberius is taking a great gamble. Frankly, his boldness astonishes me, though it shouldn’t; he’s the descendant of his grandfather, after all, and the son of his mother.”

“And the pupil of Blossius!” snapped Lucius. “You Stoics are always claiming that the best form of government is not a republic but a just king. You’ve put all sorts of dangerous ideas in Tiberius’s head.”

Blossius held his temper, but the cabbage began to rumble in his belly. “Tiberius is a visionary. If my teachings have inspired him, I take pride in that accomplishment.”

“But will you suffer the consequences along with him, when the whole enterprise collapses?”

“Tiberius is the most beloved man in Roma,” said Blossius.

“He’s also the most hated man in Roma,” countered Lucius.

“Lucius! Blossius! Stop bickering! The day is too hot for it.” Menenia sighed. “Now, I want each of you to explain to me once again, from your own point of view, exactly what Tiberius Gracchus is attempting to do, and why it holds the promise of such great success-or failure.”

Blossius raised an eyebrow. “You feign ignorance, my dear, in an effort to make us defend our positions with logic rather than emotion. You could summarize the situation as well as either of us.”

Menenia laughed. “If it will keep the two of you quiet, I shall! Back in the days when our ancestors were conquering Italy, piece by piece, Roma acquired vast parcels of public land. Later on, even more land was seized from the Italian cities that went over to Hannibal. Public policy has been to disburse this land to Roman citizens and to allied Italians as a reward for military service: Small farms keep the economy stable, and they supply more soldiers, since landowners are obliged to serve in the military. To keep the holdings small and to make disbursements fair, there have always been limits on how much land any single man can own.

“But, as the Etruscan proverb goes, money changes everything. In my lifetime, staggering amounts of gold and silver have poured into Roma from conquered cities and provinces, and as a result a very small group of citizens have become very, very rich. Some of those men have found ways to circumvent the legal limits, and have bought up vast tracts of public land, along with slaves to work their enormous holdings. As a consequence, free men all over Italy have been forced off the land and into the cities, where they struggle to survive, avoid raising families, and have no obligation to serve in the army. The situation benefits no one except a small number of enormously rich landholders. The poor masses of Italy are dispossessed of their land, and the available manpower for the Roman legions grows thin. Something must be done to take back the illegally acquired lands of the big owners and to redistribute that land to the people.” Menenia looked pleased with herself. “There. Have I explained the general situation to the satisfaction of you both?”

“I couldn’t have done it better myself,” said Blossius, “though I might add that the ramifications of this situation go far beyond mere land management. There’s the current war in Spain-a gratuitous, drawn-out, disastrous affair-which has been repeatedly bungled by the ruling clique in the Senate. That’s led to massive dissatisfaction in the ranks and the imposition of harsh and humiliating discipline. I’m thinking of the instance when deserters from the Spanish campaign were rounded up, beaten, and sold into slavery.”

He looked longingly at the cabbage, but decided to forgo another bite. “The huge influx of slaves has led to its own problems, such as the massive revolt going on in Sicily right now. Slaves are threatening to take over the entire island! And this is only the latest and largest outbreak of violence by renegade slaves. Their numbers have grown to alarming proportions all over Italy, and many of them are terribly brutalized. The situation grows more dangerous every day. Farmers pushed off the land; too little respect and recompense for the common soldiery; too many miserable, desperate slaves. The citizens of Roma are demanding that something be done-and Tiberius Gracchus has declared that he is the man to do it.”

“Only twenty-nine years old, and already a tribune!” said Menenia. “Cornelia must be very proud.”

Lucius took this as a slight. A smirk spoiled his handsome features. “Having an important father-in-law helps! Appius Claudius is probably the single most powerful man in the Senate.”

“Ah, the Claudii, forever with us! And their politics seem to grow more radical with each generation,” said Blossius. “Yes, Tiberius has a powerful ally in Claudius. But the big landholders will stop at nothing to hold on to their property. We’ve seen how the game has played out so far. Tiberius put forward a proposal to redistribute land, but it takes only one of the other nine tribunes to veto such a proposal, and the landowners managed to persuade the tribune Marcus Octavius to do so.”

Lucius became increasingly agitated. “And now we come to the reason I want nothing to do with Tiberius and his politics. When Octavius issued his veto, Tiberius called for Octavius to be removed by popular vote, and forced him from office. But Octavius refused to stand down, whereupon one of Tiberius’s freedmen forcibly dragged Octavius from the speaker’s platform, and in the scuffle that followed one of Octavius’s servants was blinded. Now Tiberius’s detractors are calling him an enemy of the people for having done what even Coriolanus failed to do: He forced a tribune from office!”

“Tiberius’s action was entirely within the law-”

“Whether the expulsion of Octavius was legal or not, I don’t know. What I do know is that Tiberius resorted to violence. Yes, he finally got his way: His proposal became law. To redistribute the land, there must be a commission. And whom does Tiberius appoint to that powerful commission? Himself, his father-in-law Appius Claudius, and his younger brother Gaius, who’s barely twenty-one!”

“Tiberius needed men he could trust,” insisted Blossius.

“It stinks of nepotism,” said Lucius. “Mother, earlier you suggested that I might have secured a place on Tiberius’s commission. I assure you, no power on earth could have persuaded me to do so!

“And now we see Tiberius’s latest gambit. As you pointed out, Mother, money changes everything. King Attalus of Pergamum has died, and his will leaves the whole of his kingdom to Roma-the lands that belonged to Troy in ancient times will now belong to us. The influx of wealth will be enormous. Normally, all that gold and booty would go directly into the Senate’s coffers, but Tiberius has a different idea. He proposes that it should go directly to the people, distributed along with the land allotments so as to pay for farm equipment and start-up supplies. His enemies call it public bribery on an unprecedented scale. They accuse Tiberius of aiming to make himself king.”

“Never!” scoffed Blossius.

“At the very least, Tiberius is attempting a kind of revolution from the bottom up. He challenges the supremacy of the Senate by using the office of tribune to do things no tribune has ever done before.”

“I think it’s all terribly exciting,” said Menenia. “Why are you so convinced that Tiberius will fail?”

“Because, Mother, his support grows weaker every day. The common people, whether it serves their interest or not, have bought into the argument that Tiberius impugned their sovereignty when he drove a rival tribune from office. And if he thinks he can appropriate the wealth of Pergamum for his own political purposes, circumventing the Senate, he’s truly playing with fire. Does Tiberius want to be a king, as his enemies say?” Lucius turned his gaze to Blossius. “He already holds court like one, keeping a Greek philosopher for an adviser.”

Blossius bristled. “My philosophy is Greek, but I am a native-born Italian, of noble Campanian blood. Yes, I was Tiberius’s tutor when he was a boy. If he still consults me as a man, why not?”

“Because Roman magistrates do not consult Greek philosophers about matters of statecraft-unless they wish to look like Greek tyrants. I only repeat what Tiberius’s enemies are saying. They also ask: When he arrived in Roma, to whom did the Pergamene ambassador deliver the royal testament and the diadem and purple cloak of the late King Attalus? To the Senate? No! He went straight to the house of Tiberius.”

“Not to anoint him king!” protested Blossius. “The ambassador called on Tiberius merely as a courtesy. Diplomatic ties between the Gracchi and the house of Attalus go back a generation. It was thirty years ago that Tiberius’s father headed a Roman embassy to investigate charges of sedition against the late king’s father, and cleared him of all suspicion. Ever since then, the royals of Pergamum have maintained a special relationship with the Gracchi.”

“Whatever the explanation, it looks suspicious.”

Blossius shook his head. “Nonsense! Tiberius’s enemies will stoop to any slander to bring him down. He stands up for the people, and the landgrabbers say he wants to be the people’s king. The voters should know better than to believe such lies.”

“We’ll see what the voters think soon enough,” said Lucius. “Tiberius is running for a second term as tribune. It’s clearly illegal for other magistrates to hold office two years in a row-”

“But not so for the tribunate,” said Blossius. “There is a precedent for a standing tribune to remain in office. If not enough new candidates stand for the ten positions in a given year-”

“Is that what Tiberius is plotting? To keep his office by bribing or scaring away other candidates?”

“The others will stand down because the people will demand it.”

Lucius groaned with exasperation. “Can you not see where all of this is headed? If Tiberius is allowed to stand for tribune again by invoking some technicality, and if he wins, his enemies will only grow more determined to stop him; that means more violence. If he loses, he’ll lose the immunity of his office, and his enemies will drag him into court on some trumped-up charge and send him into exile. No matter what happens, Tiberius is in a very dangerous position.”

A long silence followed, finally broken by a sigh from Lucius. “It’s not that I disagree with Tiberius’s proposal to redistribute the land. It’s a worthy objective. It must be done, and it will be done-eventually. If only Tiberius had taken a slower, more gradual approach-”

“The greedy landholders would have opposed me just the same,” said a hoarse voice.

“Tiberius!” cried Menenia. She sprang up, embraced the newcomer and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Where did you come from?”

“From speaking in the Forum, of course. Election day is coming. I thought I might find Blossius here.” Tiberius Gracchus had grown into a strikingly handsome man; many who compared him to busts of his grandfather declared that he was even more good-looking. On this day he appeared a bit haggard; the unceasing demands of his reelection campaign were taking a toll. Despite his fatigue, he projected an aura that seemed larger than his physical presence, that indefinable allure the Greeks called kharisma. The intimate setting of Menenia’s garden seemed too small to contain him.

Blossius rose and greeted him. They exchanged a few hushed words. Then Tiberius turned to Lucius, who had remained seated and silent.

“I couldn’t help but overhear some of your comments, Lucius. I’ve grown accustomed to defending myself before my enemies. Perhaps I should spend more time explaining myself to my friends.”

Lucius stood and drew back his shoulders. “I meant no offense, Tiberius. But here in my mother’s house I make no secret of my misgivings. I spoke freely in front of Blossius.”

“And Blossius defended me, I’m sure. But even Blossius can’t speak the words that come directly from my heart, because even Blossius has not experienced what I have experienced in the last year. Menenia, might I have a little wine? My throat is dry from speaking.”

A slave brought him a cup at once. Tiberius drank thirstily, but his voice was no less hoarse than before. “Lucius, a year ago, when I began my first campaign for the tribunate, I was little different from any other man running for the office. I was looking for political advancement, hoping to make a name for myself. Yes, I believed in the speeches I was making-or should I say, the speeches Blossius wrote for me-and the need for land reform, better treatment of the soldiery, and so on. But the promotion of those goals was little more than a means to an end, a way for me to find a constituency and began my ascent in the Course of Honor.

“Then I took a trip up and down the length of Italy, to see with my own eyes the situation in the countryside. What I witnessed was appalling. The rural areas have been virtually emptied of free men and their families. It’s as if the whole peninsula was tilted by some Titan’s hand and all those people went tumbling into Roma, and here they live piled on top of another. You can hardly pass through the streets of the Subura nowadays, it’s become so crowded.

“And after the countryside was depopulated of free men, it was filled up again-with slaves. Tilling the rich farmland, toiling in the vineyards-whole armies of foreign-born slaves, working till they drop for the handful of rich men who’ve grabbed all the land. I mean that quite literally-these slaves fall where they work and die there. It’s not unusual to see a dead slave lying in a field while the others continue to work around him under the whip of a merciless foreman. Slaves have become so cheap, so expendable, they’re treated far worse than the livestock.”

Tiberius shook his head. “We all know this situation exists. We all speak of ‘the land problem’ in the abstract, and worry over what might be done, and argue points of policy. But to see the reality firsthand, traveling day after day through the countryside, is a very different experience. I was shaken to the core by what I saw.

“But it was something else that truly changed me. I said the countryside is depopulated of free men, but that’s not entirely true. Here and there you come across a small farmer who’s somehow managed to hold on to his property, tilling his fields the old-fashioned way; the family members work side by side with a few slaves, and everyone pulls together. These little holdings have been surrounded by huge farms; they’re like little islands of the Roman countryside that once existed. And because those small farmers acquired their land by military service, or have sons currently enlisted in the legions, you’ll often see a prized piece of armor or a replica of a legionary standard proudly displayed at the gate. In a flash you see the connection between a thriving community of small farmers, a strong army, and a healthy, vibrant Roma.

“Passing such a small farm, up in Etruria, I saw a placard mounted on the gate. It said: ‘Tiberius Gracchus, help us keep our land.’” He smiled ruefully. “My name was misspelled, and the letters were very crudely made, but that sign sent a jolt sent through me. And that was only the first sign I saw. After that, at every surviving small holding I passed, even those far from the main roads, I saw such placards. ‘Tiberius Gracchus, restore public land to the poor.’ ‘Tiberius Gracchus, stop the spread of slaves.’ ‘Tiberius Gracchus, give us back our land and our work.’ ‘Tiberius Gracchus, help us.’ Somehow, news of my journey had spread from farm to farm, mouth to mouth. By the time I returned to Roma…”

Tiberius’s voice was choked with emotion, and had grown so hoarse that he could hardly continue to speak. Menenia brought him more wine. He drank it and continued.

“The mission I’ve undertaken is far greater than I am. Politicians come and go, with their squabbling and slanders and shameless scrambling for advancement. The destiny of Roma is what matters, and the fate of the Roman people, especially those who feed the city and fight for her, who give their sweat and blood and the offspring of their loins for the glory of Roma.”

There followed a long silence. At last Blossius stepped forward. There were tears in his eyes. “My dear boy! I boast about having been your tutor, but the student has far surpassed his teacher! Always you were clever, always you were serious and disciplined-yet I never imagined that Cornelia’s little boy would grow up to cast such a shadow over us all.”

Tiberius smiled wanly. “Blossius, I think you’re slightly missing the point. When I say that politicians come and go, while the destiny of the people endures, I mean just that. I have no illusions about my importance or about my permanence, except insofar as I may find a way to channel the power of the people for the benefit of the people, and for the greater glory of Roma.”

“Of course. Well put!” Blossius dabbed the sleeves of his tunic against his moist eyes. “But you say you came looking for me?”

“Yes. There are some purely practical matters I want to discuss. Appius Claudius thinks I should propose shortening the term of military service, ahead of the election. He also thinks we should put forward the idea of allowing nonsenators to serve as judges.”

“This requires serious discussion. Perhaps at your mother’s house?”

“Of course. Menenia and Lucius have put up with my ramblings long enough.”

“Nonsense!” said Menenia. “You’re welcome in this house at any time, Tiberius. You know I love to hear you speak! But you must do something about that hoarseness. An infusion of mint and honey in hot water can do wonders.”

“I’ll try it,” promised Tiberius. “Good day, Menenia. And good day to you, Lucius.” He smiled, but Lucius merely nodded in response. Tiberius and Blossius took their leave.

The garden suddenly seemed very quiet and still, and somehow empty. Mother and son sat apart, thinking their separate thoughts.

Tiberius’s story of the placards in the countryside, apparently so heart-felt, left Lucius unmoved. To him it seemed that Tiberius must be either a compulsive politician, unable to stop emoting and speechifying even in a friend’s garden, or else a genuine idealist, blinded by visions of grandeur and indifferent to the terrible dangers ahead of him. In either case, Tiberius’s passionate words made Lucius feel more uneasy than ever.

Menenia was thinking of her friend Cornelia, and how very differently their sons had turned out. Which was better: to have a son who blazed a trail like a comet, with all the brilliant uncertainty of celestial fire, or to have a son as stolid and predictable as a lump of earth? Menenia had to admit that she envied Cornelia, at least for now. But would she have reason to pity Cornelia in the future?

“If only the election for tribunes wasn’t held in the middle of the summer,” complained Tiberius. “That’s precisely when my strongest supporters are away from Roma, searching for harvesting work in the countryside. Blossius, do you think you could…?”

A fold of Tiberius’s toga was refusing to hang correctly across one shoulder. Blossius straightened it. “It’s no accident that the elections take place when they do,” the philosopher observed. “The ruling families of Roma have always arranged every aspect of every election in order to give themselves the greatest advantage and the common people the least. But if the cause is just and the candidate is steadfast, the will of the people will not be thwarted.”

Cornelia stepped into the room. “Let me have a look at you, Tiberius.” Her son obligingly stood back and struck a pose, clutching the folds of his toga with one hand. “How splendid you look! Your father and grandfather would be very proud. I only wish your little brother were here to see you.” Gaius had been sent to scour the countryside for supporters and persuade them to return to Roma for the election.

Cornelia gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Come along, then. The augur has arrived. He’s waiting for us in the garden. Stop rolling your eyes, Blossius! I know what you think of religious formalities, but this ritual must be observed for the sake of tradition. Tiberius’s father and grandfather would never have appeared before the voters on an election day without consulting an augur first.”

In the garden, the augur placed a cage with three chickens on the ground. He circled the cage three times, invoking the gods and the ancestors of Tiberius Gracchus. He scattered grain on the ground, some to the right and some to the left of the cage, then opened the hatch. The auspices would be determined by observing the motion of the birds, whether they moved in a group or as individuals and in which direction; to the right indicated the favor of the gods, to the left indicated their disfavor.

But the chickens did not leave the cage. They clucked and bumped against one another, ignoring the open hatch. The augur stamped his foot. He made shooing motions. Eventually, he gripped the top of the cage and gave it a good shaking. Finally, one of the chickens emerged. The bird ignored both scatterings of grain. It lifted its left wing, then turned around and scurried back into the cage.

The augur looked acutely embarrassed. “The auspices…are inconclusive,” he said.

Cornelia frowned. “The left wing,” she whispered. She felt a premonition of dread.

“Unfortunately” said Tiberius, “the science of augury is not as exact as we might wish. A veil lies across the future. The future shall arrive anyway.”

Mother and son exchanged a long look. Cornelia could see that Tiberius was as uneasy as herself, but she said nothing.

Tiberius proceeded to the vestibule. He paused to gaze at the images of his ancestors. He touched the brow of the great Africanus, then nodded to the slave to open the door.

Outside, in the street, a throng of supporters awaited him. Many had spent the night in front of the house, taking turns sleeping and guarding the door. In the final days of the campaign, the rhetoric on both sides had grown so heated, and the street scuffles between the factions so violent, that many feared for Tiberius’s safety. There was a rumor that his enemies were conspiring to murder him before the election; his opponents claimed that Tiberius himself had started the rumor, to whip up his supporters. Whatever the truth, a great crowd awaited him in the street, and when they saw him, they erupted into cheering.

Smiling broadly, Tiberius stepped forward. He stumbled on the threshold and lost his balance. Staggering forward, he stubbed the big toe of his left foot against a paving stone with such force that he thought he heard a bone crack. At the very least, the nail of the toe had been broken. Blood seeped through the front of his shoe and darkened the leather. He felt faint and nauseated. He reached for support, found Blossius’s arm, and gripped it tightly.

“You’ve hurt yourself!” whispered Blossius.

“Did they see?” Tiberius kept his face down and spoke through clenched teeth.

Blossius scanned the cheering crowd. “No one seems to have noticed.”

“Good. Then we shall go ahead as if it never happened.”

“But can you walk?”

“If I hold fast to your arm. But first I’ll say a few words. These men have been here all night, waiting for this moment.”

Tiberius looked at the crowd and managed to smile. He raised his hands for silence.

“Loyal supporters, dear friends, fellow Romans: The long night has passed, and, whatever mischief our enemies might have been planning, we are all still alive!”

This was met with a great deal of cheering and laughter.

“You watched over me all through the night. For that, I thank you. And in return, in the second year of my tribunate, I promise to do my very best to watch over all of you-to restore to you the lands that are rightfully yours, to protect you from the greedy land-grabbers and their vicious gangs, and to make the Roma of your children a fairer, richer, better place for all hardworking citizens.

“To do all that, I must win today’s election. And to win the election, first and foremost, I must stay alive. The threat from our enemies is very real. At any place and at any time, I might be assaulted. I don’t fear a fight; I’ve done my share of fighting! I was the first to scale the walls of Carthage, and was awarded the mural crown. I also fought in Spain, alongside many of you brave men. But here in Roma, I am no longer a soldier, but a private citizen. I carry no weapons. You must be my guardians. Without your protection, I am defenseless.”

“We’ll defend you!” cried a man in the front of the crowd. “If we have to, we’ll die for you, Tiberius Gracchus!” He was joined by many others.

“It will never come to that, I pray to Jupiter. But if I should perceive an immediate threat, and require a ring of brave men around me, I may not be able to cry out to you. My voice is hoarse, and the din may be too great. So, this will be my signal.” Tiberius raised both arms skyward, then bent his elbows so that he pointed at his head with both hands. The sign was unmistakable: rally to the head.

The crowd began to clap and chant his name. Tiberius gripped Blossius’s arm with one hand and waved with the other. He walked forward, trying not to wince at the pain. “Perhaps it’s a good thing, that I stumbled,” he whispered to Blossius. “The auspices indicated a bad start. Now the bad start is behind me!”

Limping slightly despite Blossius’s support, Tiberius set out for the Capitoline, where the voting would take place. As he descended the Palatine, more supporters joined his retinue. Many more were waiting in the Forum. They opened a path for him, cheering and reaching out to touch him as he passed by, then joined the throng that followed behind him.

On the steps leading up to the Capitoline, Tiberius paused before the Arch of Scipio Africanus. The monument was decorated with images of his grandfather’s triumphs in both Africa and Asia. Scipio had survived the battle of Cannae and shamed his fellow officers by his fortitude, had lost the father whose life he had saved in battle, and had matched wits with Hannibal and beaten him. Tiberius laughed aloud at the absurdity that a stubbed toe should give him a moment’s pause. He made a silent vow to ascend to the voting place without limping or leaning on Blossius, and to show no sign of pain.

He had passed under the arch and proceeded a short distance when he heard a noise from above. Screeching and beating their wings, two ravens were fighting on the roof of a building next to the pathway, to his left. Their altercation dislodged a roof tile. The tile fell directly in front of Tiberius and shattered with a loud noise. Tiberius flinched.

“The augury, the stumble…and now this!” he whispered. “One bad omen after another-”

“Nonsense!” said Blossius in his ear. “Chickens behave like chickens. People stub their toes every day. Ravens squabble. Tiberius, if you start to see omens in every accident and happenstance, you will indeed be putting on the airs of a king; only a tyrant imagines the universe revolves around himself. A raven dislodged a loose bit of tile-nothing more!”

Tiberius nodded, straightened his toga, and continued the ascent.

The large open space before the Temple of Jupiter was already crowded when Tiberius arrived with his retinue. Only plebeians could vote for the tribunes, and they did so by first gathering into voting blocks called tribes. Even on the most peaceful of election days, the polling officials were hard-pressed to maintain order; for their own protection and to hold back the unruly crowd they were allowed to carry spear-shafts without metal points. News of Tiberius’s arrival was met with a tremendous uproar of mingled acclamation and jeering. Jostled this way and that, some in the crowd retaliated by shoving back. Fistfights broke out. The election officials scrambled to maintain order by brandishing their shafts.

Over the centuries, the assembly area had become so congested with shrines and statues, and the number of voters had so increased, that the simple procedure of assembling into tribes had become a logistical challenge. Elections could be won or lost depending on whether a candidate’s supporters were able to assemble when called on. Tiberius’s supporters had arrived early and in great numbers to claim the best spots for addressing the crowd and to maintain open pathways. If the supporters of opposition candidates could be kept at the periphery of the voting area or excluded altogether, Tiberius’s chances would be increased.

With Blossius at his side and surrounded by a cadre of his most ardent supporters, Tiberius was ushered through the crowd and escorted onto the steps of the Temple of Jupiter. At the sight of him, more cheering erupted from the center of the crowd and catcalls from the edges.

He had hoped to address the crowd, but the unceasing din made doing so impossible. He had never seen such a raucous election assembly. The participants seemed to be in continuous motion, shouting and gesturing. Scattered here and there, especially around the periphery or in the tight spots where a statue or shrine made movement difficult, skirmishes appeared to be taking place. It was not unlike watching a battlefield.

Some of the election officials, growing exasperated, were banging their shafts against the ground, calling for order and demanding that the gathering of the tribes begin. The voters were either unwilling to cooperate, or unable to hear them. The scene was chaotic.

A pathway opened in the crowd and one of Tiberius’s supporters in the Senate, Fulvius Flaccus, rushed toward him, breathless with alarm.

“Tiberius, I’ve just come from an emergency meeting of the Senate. All morning your enemies have been demanding that the consul Scaevola declare today’s election an illegal assembly-”

“Illegal? The people have the right to elect tribunes-”

“They claim the disorder is too great, a menace to public safety-or worse.”

“Worse?”

“Your cousin Scipio Nasica says you’re mustering a mob to bring down the state. After you massacre your opponents in the Senate, you’ll declare yourself king-”

“Nasica!” Tiberius spat the word. The two cousins, both heirs to the bloodline of Africanus, despised each other. There was no greater reactionary in the Senate than Nasica. While Tiberius had made himself the champion of the common people, Nasica made no secret of despising them. Even when he campaigned for their votes, he could not resist insulting them. “I know better than you lot what is good for the state,” he had once shouted at an unruly crowd; opponents joked that this was his idea of a campaign slogan. And once, shaking the horny palm of a farm laborer, Nasica had snidely commented, “How does one get such calluses? Do you walk on your hands?”

Blossius spoke up. “The consul Scaevola is a good man.”

“Indeed he is,” said Flaccus. “He’s refused to sanction any attempt to cancel the election. But that hasn’t stopped Nasica. ‘If the consul won’t act to save the state, then private citizens must do so’-that’s what Nasica said. He and a number of other senators gathered outside, and then they were joined by a gang of cutthroats-the roughest sort of men you can imagine, armed with clubs.”

“They planned this ahead of time,” said Blossius.

“Obviously!” said Flaccus. “And now they’re coming this way, with Nasica leading them. They mean to kill you, Tiberius! They think they’re on a sacred mission-the senators have wrapped the red hem of their togas across their foreheads, like priests about to carry out a sacrifice!”

Tiberius’s blood ran cold. He stared at the unsuspecting crowd.

“The signal!” cried Blossius. “Give the signal!”

Tiberius raised his arms in the air. The movement drew the attention of the crowd. With all eyes on him, Tiberius pointed to his head.

His supporters understood at once. They seized the shafts carried by the election officials, broke them in pieces, and passed the fragments among themselves; the longer sections could serve as cudgels and the splintered ends as daggers. There were a number of benches throughout the assembly area. They began to smash these as well, to use the fragments as weapons.

Tiberius’s opponents in the crowd took the signal to mean something else. “He points at his head-he’s demanding a crown!” men cried. “Look at his followers, gathering weapons-they mean to take the Capitoline by force. They’ll declare Tiberius king!”

Amid the mounting chaos, there was an even greater commotion at the entry to the assembly area. Nasica and his fellow senators, with their gang of cutthroats, had arrived.

A violent free-for-all followed. On the Palatine and down in the Forum, and even on the far side of the Tiber men could hear the sounds of combat atop the Capitoline.

Several of Tiberius’s supporters ran to his side and offered him their weapons, but he refused to take them. Instead he turned his back on the melee, faced the Temple of Jupiter, and raised his arms in prayer.

“Jupiter, greatest of gods, protector of my grandfather in battle-”

Blossius seized the folds of his toga and shouted at him. “Go inside the temple! Run! When they come for you, claim Jupiter’s protection-”

Blossius was struck across the belly by a club. With the breath knocked out of him, he fell to his knees.

Hands converged on Tiberius. They grabbed his toga and pulled it off him. Wearing only his under-tunic, Tiberius bolted up the steps of the temple, limping because of his injured toe; he tripped on a step and fell forward. Before he could get to his feet, a cudgel struck his head and sent him reeling. He blindly struggled to his feet and stood swaying for a moment. Another club, swung with tremendous force, struck his head and shattered his skull with a sickening crack.

Blossius had just managed to get to his feet. Red gore and pale bits of brain spattered his robes. He stood aghast and gaping at the bloody remains that lay crumpled on the steps.

One of the killers recognized him. “It’s the Greek philosopher-the would-be king’s adviser!”

“Toss him from the Tarpeian Rock!”

Whooping and laughing, they seized Blossius by his hands and feet and carried him down the steps. They headed toward the rock, dodging clubs and hopping over corpses that littered the way.

They reached the precipice, but instead of shoving him over, they made sport of swinging him back and forth, back and forth, gaining momentum.

“On the count of three: one…two…three!”

They released him and sent him hurtling into space.

For a brief moment, Blossius appeared to defy the earth’s pull. He soared skyward. Then, with a sickening twist in his gut, he began to fall.

They had thrown him clear of the precipice. Under normal circumstances, his downward plummet would have ended at the foot of the Capitoline. But many men had been pushed from the Tarpeian Rock before him. A few of these men had managed to grab hold of the rock face and cling to the sheer cliff. Flailing frantically, Blossius grabbed the garments of one of these men and broke his fall. Almost at once he lost his grip and fell upon the next man down. In such a manner, grasping at one desperate man after another, repeatedly breaking his fall and then falling again, he descended the cliff. More than once, a man above him lost his grip and plummeted past him, screaming.

At last, drained of the last vestige of will, overwhelmed with terror, with nothing left to grasp, Blossius fell in earnest.

He landed not upon hard earth, but upon a pile of bodies. More bodies fell around him, like hail dropping from the sky.

As night descended, the killers gathered the bodies of the dead, loaded them onto carts, and wheeled them across the Forum Boarium to dump them in the Tiber.

Blossius gradually woke. At first he imagined that he had been buried alive, but the confining mass surrounding him was not earth, but dead flesh. The cart jerked and bumped beneath him, sending a great throbbing soreness through every part of his body. He would have groaned, but he had no air in his lungs. The pressure against his chest would not allow him to draw a breath.

From somewhere he heard muffled sounds-women sobbing and shrieking. A woman cried out, “Let me have my husband’s body! At least give me his body!” A harsh masculine voice ordered her back.

The cart came to a halt. The world began to tilt. The mass of flesh all around him shifted and gave way, like a cliff disintegrating in a landslide. He tumbled helplessly forward.

He was suddenly underwater. The shock wrenched him to full consciousness. Sputtering, flailing his arms, he found the surface and sucked in a lungful of air.

The sky above was dark and full of stars. The swiftly flowing current was littered with bodies. In his dazed state, he somehow sensed which was the farther shore and swam toward it. Again and again, he collided with floating corpses. One of them seemed to wrap its arms around him. In a panic, he struggled to free himself. The man could not possibly be alive; that was obvious from his smashed skull.

As Blossius pulled free, he glimpsed the dead man’s face.

It was Tiberius.

Impulsively, he reached for the body, but it slipped away on the current, its torso spinning, its limbs bobbing, as lifeless as a floating branch.

Weary beyond hope and wracked with sobbing, Blossius pulled himself onto the riverbank and collapsed into oblivion.

“If I had followed your advice, dear mother-if I had tied my fortunes to those of Tiberius-just imagine the consequences!” Lucius Pinarius nervously paced the garden. “Now you must follow my advice. Drive this dangerous fool from our house!”

He pointed at Blossius, who sat stripped to the waist, patiently allowing Menenia to tend to his many wounds with ointment and fresh bandages. Three days had passed since his brush with death, but he was still badly shaken.

The entire city was reeling from the shock of the massacre on the Capitoline. At least three hundred men had been killed. No man alive could remember anything like it; for the first time since the fall of Tarquinius and the precarious early years of the Republic, political strife had erupted in mass bloodshed, with Romans killing Romans. The careless desecration of the bodies was grossly offensive even to many who opposed Tiberius, and had caused widespread anger and resentment. But the senatorial faction that had put an end to Tiberius, led by Scipio Nasica, was unrepentant. Having gained the upper hand, they had proceeded to order the arrest, interrogation, and execution, without trial, of anyone involved in what they called the “Gracchan sedition.” New names were constantly added to the list of suspects; those arrested were tortured until they implicated others. Rumor and panic ruled the city. The Tiber was jammed with vessels taking men to Ostia, where they hoped to board ships to take them away from Italy, into exile.

Blossius winced as Menenia dabbed the stinging ointment onto a cut across his shoulder, then he took her hand and kissed it. “Your son is right,” he said. “I escaped the massacre on the Capitoline, and somehow, so far, Nasica’s henchmen have overlooked me. But very soon, they’ll come for me.”

There was a banging at the door. Blossius stiffened, then stood and covered himself.

A troop of armed lictors came striding into the garden. The senior of the lictors spared only a glance for Lucius and his mother, then glared at Blossius. “Here you are, philosopher! We went looking for you at the would-be king’s house first. Isn’t that your official address here in Roma, where you sponge off the daughter of Africanus? Did you think you could escape us by hiding here? Or is this how you philosophers make a living, going from the house of one lonely Roman widow to another, sucking up their wine and spilling your seed in their beds?”

Lucius bolted forward angrily, but the lictor raised his club, and Lucius stepped back. His mother was less timid. She dabbed her fingertips in the jar of ointment, then flicked them in the lictor’s face. The man dropped his club and wiped the stinging unguent from his eyes.

“Bitch!” he shouted. “If you were anything but a woman, that would count as an act of sedition, and I’d see you stripped naked and flogged for it!”

The man bent to retrieve his club. Rising up, he struck Blossius hard across the belly. Blossius bent double in pain. A pair of lictors seized his arms and roughly escorted him from the garden.

Menenia covered her face and began to weep. The lictor leered at her. “Are you going to miss the old Stoic that much? He looks a bit decrepit for stud service. You’re still a handsome enough mare. Surely you could find a strong young Roman to mount you!”

The man looked sidelong at Lucius; the insult was aimed as much at him as at his mother, daring him to strike back. Lucius clenched his fists and bowed his head, seething with outrage and shame.

As soon as the lictors had departed, Menenia gripped his arm. “Follow them,” she pleaded. “Do whatever you can for Blossius!”

“Mother, there’s nothing anyone can do.”

“Then at least see where they take him and what they do to him. I won’t be able to stand it, if he simply vanishes and I never know what happened. Please, Lucius, I beg you!”

Unable to stand her sobbing, Lucius ran from the house. His heart pounding, he followed the lictors at a safe distance and watched as they entered house after house on the Palatine, arresting one man after another. The prisoners were tied together and herded in single file down a winding path to the Forum.

Following the captives, Lucius witnessed a sight that seemed more appropriate to a nightmare than to the Forum in broad daylight. While a circle of well-dressed men, some of them senators, looked on and jeered, lictors forced a man in tattered, bloody garments into a wooden box that was scarcely big enough to contain him. Before they closed the lid, they emptied a jar full of writhing vipers inside. Even muffled by the box, the man’s screams echoed across the Forum. The circle of watchers banged on the box with sticks and laughed.

The captives were dragged before an open-air tribunal. Lucius joined the crowd of spectators, standing toward the back and trying not to draw attention.

The judges on the platform included Scipio Nasica, who led the questioning. Blossius was the first prisoner to be interrogated.

“You are Blossius of Cumae, the Stoic philosopher?” said Nasica.

“You know I am.”

“Simply answer the question. There is one protocol for questioning citizens, and another for foreigners. Are you Blossius of Cumae?”

“I am. You call me a foreigner, but I’m a native-born Italian.”

“Italy is not Roma.”

“Nonetheless, I am of noble Campanian blood.”

Nasica raised an eyebrow. “Yes, the tribunal is well aware of your ancestors among the Blossii who betrayed Roma and induced their fellow Campanians to take up arms with Hannibal.”

Blossius sighed. “That was a very long time ago.”

“Perhaps. You come from Cumae, do you not?”

“Yes.”

“As I said, Italy is not Roma-and Cumae can scarcely be considered part of Italy. Cumaeans speak Greek. They practice Greek vices. They send philosophers to spread polluted Greek ideas here in Roma.”

“When Tiberius Gracchus was a boy, I taught him virtue, not vice. When he became a man, I offered him counsel and guidance-”

“The tribunal has no interest in your dubious career. We are investigating a very real sedition, not your imaginary philosophy. We are chiefly interested in learning what you know about the activities of the would-be king, Tiberius Gracchus, and his recent attempt to overthrow the state.”

“This is absurd! There was no such attempt.”

“Were you present when Tiberius Gracchus met with the Pergamene ambassador who delivered the royal testament of the late King Attalus?”

“I was.”

“And did you witness Tiberius Gracchus receive the diadem and purple cloak of the king?”

“Yes. But-”

“Did he not put the diadem his head?”

“Perhaps, briefly, as a sort of joke-”

“Did you not, at the behest of Tiberius Gracchus, draw up a ledger for disbursing the treasure bequeathed to Roma by King Attalus?”

“That ledger was purely hypothetical and contingent upon-”

“I realize, Blossius, that you are not used to answering questions with a simple yes or no. How you philosophers love to hear yourselves speak! Perhaps, to expedite this testimony, I should order your tongue to be removed. Then you can answer by tapping your foot on the ground-once for yes, twice for no.”

Blossius turned pale. The spectators erupted in laughter. Standing among them, Lucius cringed and longed to make himself invisible.

As the interrogation continued, it became clear that Nasica’s purpose was not so much to incriminate Blossius as to bolster his own rationale for taking action against Tiberius. To one leading question after another, he compelled Blossius to answer yes or no.

“From your answers, I believe the tribunal must conclude that any and all crimes you committed against the Roman state were carried out at the behest of Tiberius Gracchus. Is that correct?”

Blossius sighed. “How can I answer such a question?”

“I shall restate it. Any action you undertook affecting the Roman state, you undertook at the behest of Tiberius Gracchus. Yes or no?”

“Yes.”

“Very well. One final question: What if Tiberius Gracchus had ordered you to set fire to the Capitoline? Would you have done so?”

“This is madness! Tiberius would never have given such an order.”

“Answer the question!”

Blossius gritted his teeth. “If Tiberius had ordered such a thing, then it would have been the right thing to do, because Tiberius never gave an order that was not in the best interest of the people!”

Nasica sat back and crossed his arms, making a great show of his disgust. “There you have it-the philosopher speaks, and we can see just how corrupt and insidious his ideas truly are! My questioning is done. Is there any man present who wishes to offer testimony on behalf of the accused?” He gazed at the spectators. Lucius lowered his face and hid himself in the crowd.

The judges on the platform conferred briefly, then Nasica rose and addressed the spectators. “We declare that Blossius of Cumae has testified freely and truthfully regarding the recent sedition perpetrated by Tiberius Gracchus. We further declare that Blossius has, by his own words, discredited himself, his teachings, and anyone who was ever his pupil. If he were a citizen, he would be put to death for treason, but since he is merely a foreigner, he will be exiled from the city for life. He is free to depart from this tribunal. He must leave Roma before sunrise, or else face immediate execution. Bring forth the next prisoner!”

“Not a single question about my beliefs! Not a single accusation having anything to do with Stoicism, or the values I taught Tiberius! The arrogance of those men! I, Blossius of Cumae, am too insignificant even to bother executing!”

Blossius had packed his belongings at the house of Cornelia. He had come to Menenia’s house to say good-bye.

“I should go with you. There’s nothing for me here.” Menenia’s voice was dull and lifeless. The terror of Blossius’s arrest, the relief that he had been set free, and then the cruel news of his exile had utterly worn her out.

“Nonsense,” said Blossius. “Your son is here. Did we not conclude, once upon a time, that a woman’s greatest role is to be a mother?”

“That was Cornelia’s conclusion, not mine.”

“Cornelia needs your friendship more than ever. The loss of Tiberius has devastated her.”

Menenia shook her head. “I should go with you.”

“No, beloved. Exile is not for you.”

Lucius stood nearby, saying nothing. He had been right, and here was the proof-Tiberius’s radical politics had ended in disaster for himself and all those associated with him. But being right gave Lucius no satisfaction. He felt only shame and bitterness.

“Where will you go, Blossius?” asked Menenia.

“First, I’ll take a boat downriver to Ostia-”

“In the dead of night?”

Blossius grunted. “That’s when traffic on the river is busiest these days. I won’t be the only man fleeing the city! At Ostia, I’ll board the first ship heading east. There must be some monarch, somewhere in Greece or Asia, who’ll offer me asylum-a man who’s sympathetic to Stoic teachings…a man who’s unafraid of Roma…”

A fool, you mean-like you, thought Lucius. But he bit his tongue and said nothing.

129 B.C.

Lucius Pinarius took the letter from his mother’s trembling hand. It was written in Greek, on parchment of the highest quality. Lucius read slowly, paying careful attention to every word.

From Blossius to Menenia, greetings and deepest affections:

What a comfort your letters are to me, like salve on a wound!

Any day that a messenger arrives with a missive from you is a day of celebration for me.

I am glad to hear that you and Lucius are both in good health. I am glad that your son’s business prospers. There must be much money to be made as a state contractor, especially in the building trade.

Thank you for sending news of Cornelia. That she remains in mourning, three years after the death of Tiberius, is, in my opinion, entirely fitting. The nature of her son’s death, the desecration of his body, and the outrageous aftermath all justify a longer period of mourning than is customarily considered seemly.

But Tiberius’s brother, you say, no longer wears black. Well,

Gaius is a young man and must get on with his life. I have mixed feelings about his apparent decision to withdraw completely from political life, and to devote himself (like Lucius) entirely to money-making. In some ways, Gaius’s potential as a leader actually surpassed that of his brother. What a waste, that he should forgo the Course of Honor! But after seeing what was done to Tiberius, who can blame him for pursuing a different destiny?

I wonder, though, whether Gaius will not eventually find himself drawn back to public life. The lure of politics is so strong in his blood!

As for my career, I am proud to report that King Aristonicus takes me deeper into his confidence every day. Yes, I proudly call him King, though the Romans refuse to recognize his status and brand him a rebel. The will of the late King Attalus was rendered null and void when General Aristonicus claimed the throne of Pergamum by both force of arms and moral authority. How peeved the Roman senators must be, to see their dreams of laying hands on the treasury of Pergamum dashed; their greed for that treasure was one of their reasons for murdering Tiberius.

King Aristonicus is a remarkable man. I have every confidence that, with my counsel, he will attain the Stoic ideal of a just king. We speak often of the new capitol he dreams of founding-we will call it Heliopolis, City of the Sun-in which all men of all classes, including slaves, shall be free.

Aristonicus is also a military genius, thank the gods! He will boldly defend his claim to the throne of Pergamum against Roman arms. When he is seen to prevail, there is hope that other leaders across Asia and Greece will rise up and break the grip of Roma and its corrupt republic. The only hope for the rest of the world is to resist Roma’s domination at every turn.

But here I am, rattling on about politics! Forgive me, my love. Without you beside me, I have little else to think about. My life is out of balance; the part of me that is most essentially alive-a corporeal man capable of love, desire, tears, and laughter-is shriveled and withered, like a once sturdy vine ripped from the rich, moist earth. How I miss you! Your words, your face, the music of your voice, the warmth of your body! Perhaps, someday-in Heliopolis? — we shall be together again. But that time is not yet, alas!

As always, I urge you to destroy this letter immediately after you read it. Resist any temptation to save my letters for sentimental reasons. Burn them! I do the same with every letter I receive from you, though afterward my tears fall among the ashes. This is for your safety, not mine. We have seen, to our sorrow, just how ruthless the enemies of virtue have become, and how they can turn the words of the virtuous against them.

All my love to you….

Lucius lowered the parchment with a shudder. He was not sure which offended him most-the Stoic’s snide, backhanded compliment on Lucius’s money-making pursuits, his typically self-satisfied fawning over the upstart Aristonicus, or his salacious metaphors regarding himself and Menenia. A sturdy vine ripped from the rich, moist earth, indeed!

“Promise me, Mother, that you’ve done exactly as he’s instructed you-that you’ve destroyed every letter he’s ever sent you.”

Menenia looked up at him with tears in her eyes. She drew her eyebrows together. She shrugged with one shoulder.

“By Hercules and Hades! You didn’t burn them, did you? You’ve kept them.”

“Not all! Only a few,” whispered Menenia. “Only the most…personal. There was nothing in any of the letters I’ve saved that could possibly-”

“Any letter from Blossius is dangerous, mother. Don’t you understand? We must destroy anything that establishes a continuing link between him and us since he left Roma, and especially since he joined with Aristonicus. The content doesn’t matter-although this latest letter could hardly be more damning! Where are the letters you saved? Fetch them! Now! Do it yourself-don’t send a slave. Bring them here at once. I’ll stoke the fire in the brazier.”

Left alone in the garden for a moment, Lucius bowed his head and allowed his arms to drop to his side. His knees turned to water; for a moment, he thought he might collapse. For his mother’s sake, he had put on a mask, showing only anger, concealing the panic that had been welling up inside him ever since he crossed the Forum that morning and heard the news from Pergamum.

Aristonicus the Pretender had been captured. His forces were annihilated. The kingdom of the late Attalus and its immense treasury had been secured at last by Roman arms. The Roman commander Marcus Perperna was already boasting of the triumph he would enjoy when he would parade Aristonicus naked through Roma, publicly whip him till he begged to die, then strangle him in the dank prison cell of the Tullianum.

Hearing the news, Lucius rushed home, brusquely told his mother that Aristonicus was defeated, and demanded to see any scraps of correspondence from Blossius. He had not told her the news about Blossius. So far, either because she was too shocked or too frightened to ask, his mother had not inquired. How Lucius dreaded the moment!

Menenia returned with a few pieces of parchment. From their much-handled condition, Lucius could see that she had reread them countless times. Sighing, he took the letters from her.

“You’re certain these are all the letters, every one?”

“Yes, Lucius.”

“We must pray to the gods that Blossius did as he told you, and burned every one of your letters to him as well.” One by one, Lucius laid the letters upon the flames. He and his mother watched them ignite and then crumple into ashes.

“All his letters…all his words…gone,” Menenia whispered. She braced herself. “And Blossius?”

“Blossius is dead, mother. He did the wise thing, the dignified thing. If they had captured him…” Lucius quailed at uttering the words aloud: torture, humiliation, lingering death. He cleared his throat. “Rather than face capture, he killed himself. He died like a Roman.”

“He died like a Stoic.” Menenia closed her eyes. The heat given off by the burning letters-the last vestige of Blossius’s existence on earth-warmed the tears on her cheeks.

Lucius gazed at his mother. Whatever he had thought of Blossius, he was moved by her grief. As on the day Blossius left, Lucius felt no sense of vindication, only deep shame and sorrow.

124 B.C.

“When I was a boy,” said Gaius Gracchus, smiling at his listeners, “my old tutor Blossius made me read every line of Euripides. Dear old Blossius! Not much of Euripides has stayed with me, I’m sorry to say, except a few lines from his play The Bacchae:

The gods have many guises. The gods bring crises to climax while man surmises. The end anticipated has not been consummated. But god has found a way for what no man expected. So ends the play.

Well, my dear friends, ‘the play’ is far from over. It’s just beginning! But already, the gods have found a way ‘for what no man expected.’ Nine years ago, when my brother Tiberius died, who among us could possibly have foreseen this day?”

Gaius paused to allow these words to sink in. Silently, he counted to ten. The deliberate, well-timed pause was an orator’s technique that Tiberius had taught him: You go too fast, little brother. Stop now and then, especially after you’ve said something clever or thoughtful. Catch a breath-count to ten-allow your listeners to think and feel for a moment…

Gaius was not in the Forum, haranguing a motley crowd of citizens, but in the lamplit garden of his mother’s house on the Palatine, addressing an intimate gathering of his most ardent supporters. This was a victory celebration. Gaius Gracchus, who had sworn off politics forever after his brother’s death, had just been elected tribune of the plebs, following in Tiberius’s footsteps.

“Well, maybe my mother could have foreseen it.” Gaius nodded to Cornelia, who reclined on a couch nearby. “Not a day of my childhood passed when I was not exhorted to live up to the example of my grandfather. And yet, it’s my mother’s example that most inspires me, that sets the greatest challenge for me. Was there ever a mortal of either sex who possessed such fortitude and courage? All of you, join me in saluting her-Cornelia, daughter of Africanus, wife of Tiberius Gracchus who was twice consul and whose statue stands in the Forum, mother of Tiberius the people’s martyr!”

Cornelia smiled, so graciously that an observer might have thought she had never heard such words before. In fact, she had appeared alongside Gaius countless times during the campaign, all over Roma and up and down the countryside, playing the proud mother and beaming recipient of her son’s extravagant tributes. Gaius’s supporters adored Cornelia; they adored Gaius for adoring her.

In the final days of the campaign, the crowds who came to hear Gaius had increased beyond all expectations. Even Tiberius at the peak of his popularity had never mustered such multitudes. When election day arrived, such a throng poured into Roma to vote that the inns could not accommodate them. Men slept in trees, by the roadside, and on rooftops.

One result of the Gracchan massacre had been a relocation of the voting area. Elections were no longer held atop the cramped Capitoline, but on the Field of Mars outside the city walls, where there was plenty of room for the tribes to assemble. Structures resembling sheepfolds were built so that voters could pass through, one at a time, to cast their votes. But even these new accommodations proved inadequate for the number of voters who turned out to support Gaius. More than once, the crush had threatened to erupt in a riot, but in the end the voting was concluded without bloodshed. Gaius had emerged a clear victor with a mandate to carry out a platform of reforms even more radical than those of his brother.

After saluting Cornelia, Gaius turned his gaze to another who sat nearby. “And let us not forget my dear friend Lucius Pinarius. Not even he foresaw my return to politics. Yet, when I decided to run for tribune, this man devoted himself and his considerable fortune completely to my campaign. Lucius represents a powerful new force in this city: the class of men we call Equestrians, after our forefather’s tradition of rewarding their finest warriors with a charger at public expense. These days, men are admitted to the Equestrian ranks by the censor, and their distinction is not horsemanship or valor, but the accumulation of wealth; they are men of means who have chosen to forgo the Course of Honor, and so they form an elite class distinct from the Senate. So fine a businessman is Lucius Pinarius that I swear commerce must be in his blood, just as politics is in mine. The Equestrians of Roma, who work hard and risk their fortunes to make this a more prosperous city, are the future. The idle senators who consume more wealth than they create-and who look down their noses at the rest of us-represent the dead past.

“Lucius is a builder, responsible for construction projects throughout the city. He has a devoted wife and a young son, and all the worldly success a man could wish for. We’ve been business partners for many years, Lucius and I. We know each other so well that we-”

“Finish each other’s sentences?” quipped Lucius.

“Indeed! And yet, when I decided to make the run for tribune, no one was more surprised than Lucius. And no one was more surprised than I when Lucius took the headlong plunge into politics right beside me-or behind me, I should say, since he prefers to play the role of mover and shaker behind the scenes. Salute him with me, all of you-Lucius Pinarius, distinguished Equestrian, friend, financial supporter, trusted confidante!”

Unlike Cornelia, Lucius was unused to being praised in public. He was now over forty, but he blushed like a boy.

All the world knew Gaius’s story: the trauma of Tiberius’s murder, the withdrawal from the public arena, the eventual-now triumphant-return to politics. But no one knew Lucius’s story except Lucius himself. He alone knew the tangled emotions that had led him to this night. The shame of his inaction before and after Tiberius’s murder had never ceased to gnaw at him. His career had provided a lucrative distraction; family life had brought many rewards; his status as an Equestrian had given him great satisfaction. But all these accomplishments had done nothing to assuage his sense of failure. He had found redemption only by following Gaius’s lead, throwing caution to the wind, and thumbing his nose at the reactionary forces that had destroyed his mother’s happiness and his own sense of self-worth.

“Beside Lucius sits his mother, the virtuous Menenia. Beside her is my lovely wife, Licinia,” said Gaius. “I thank both of you for sitting up with my mother on all those nights when I was late getting home after buying a round of wine for the voters.”

His wife coyly cocked her head. “But Gaius, beloved, did you have to buy a round every night, for every voter, in every tavern in Roma?”

This elicited genial laughter from the guests, and calls for more wine.

“My friends, I could spend the whole night publicly acknowledging each one of you, and thanking every voter by name, but this is a victory party, and you are going to hear a victory speech! You’ve heard all my pledges already, I know, but here’s the difference: Before, you heard them from a mere candidate; now you’re hearing them from a newly elected tribune of the plebs!”

Gaius waited for the thunderous ovation to die down. “First, regarding the military, I propose that the state pay to clothe its soldiers, instead of requiring them to do so at their own expense. I further propose that no one under the age of seventeen should be required to serve. Most important, new colonies must be established to provide fresh homesteads for our veterans. Brave men aimlessly wander the streets, men who gave years of service and risked life and limb for the promise of a better life. That promise must be fulfilled!

“For the common good, I propose that the state should set the price of grain. I’m not saying that people should be given free grain, as my opponents assert, but grain at a reasonable price, stabilized by subsidies from the treasury and the building of granaries in the city to stockpile a surplus. If the state cannot make food affordable for a working citizen and his family, then what is the state good for?

“I propose a massive program of road-building, overseen by qualified Equestrians and employing able-bodied citizens, not slaves. The treasury is bloated from foreign conquests; why let that money sit idle when we can put it in the hands of the workers and get new, better roads in return?

“There must also be reform in the courts. Since time immemorial, senators alone have held the right to sit in judgment over the rest of the citizenry. They run the civil and the criminal courts. They even judge themselves; when a provincial governor is charged with extortion, his fellow senators determine his innocence or guilt. To the pool of three hundred senators eligible to serve as judges, I propose adding three hundred Equestrians. The court system will receive a badly needed shake-up, and perhaps we will begin to see true accountability!

“This, my friends, sums up the program that was overwhelmingly endorsed by the voters today. We shall win over the poorer citizens with the grain subsidy, state employment, and new colonies. We shall win over the wealthy Equestrians with lucrative public contracts and new judicial privileges. Pity the poor senators-they shall have nothing left but their dignity!”

The guests warmly applauded. Someone shouted, “What about land reform?”

Gaius grimaced, then forced a brittle smile. “Yes, what about land reform? Well, over the last nine years, much of the necessary redistribution of land has already been carried out. Ironic, isn’t it? My brother Tiberius saw the overwhelming need for land reform. He bravely spoke for it, pressed for it-and for doing so, he was murdered. Then his murderers realized that reform was inevitable-either that, or a revolution-and the next thing you know, the cynical vipers were paying lip-service to Tiberius’s goals, watering down his legislation and slapping their own names on it, then patting themselves on the back and congratulating one another for saving the Republic!”

Gaius’s voice had risen to a shrill pitch. A servant standing behind him raised a pipe to his lips and blew a low note. The tension in the room was replaced by laughter and scattered applause. Gaius visibly relaxed. He smiled, turned about, and put his arm around the short, balding pipe player.

“You all know Licinius; he’s one of my wife’s freedmen. Licinius helps me practice an orator’s trick my brother taught me. Whenever I start to get a little out of hand-too emotional, too heated-Licinius blows a note on his pipe, and I rein myself in. He has me well trained, don’t you think?”

Gaius gave the man a kiss on his bald pate. The guests crowed with laughter.

“Well, then, back to my speech. We come to the capstone, the most ambitious project of all: to extend full citizenship to all of Roma’s allies throughout Italy. For years, we’ve witnessed abuses by Roman magistrates against the subject people of Italy, who pay taxes and fight in the legions alongside us, but without the privileges of full citizenship. Give them that gift, and Roma will acquire a massive influx of loyal new citizens-and those new voters will remember the tribune who gained their rights for them. With such a power base, that tribune could guide Roma to her highest destiny.”

Gaius lowered his eyes. “When I was a boy, Blossius taught me about the Golden Age of Athens, and about the great leader who made that Golden Age possible, a man of extraordinary vision called Pericles. Roma, for all her achievements, has yet to enter her Golden Age. But, with this election, I pray to the gods that Roma has at last found her Pericles.”

Lucius, listening, drew a sharp breath. This was a new rhetorical flourish; Gaius had never before spoken of a Golden Age, or compared himself to Pericles. This was heady stuff. It hinted at ambitions far beyond those of Tiberius. Listening to such talk, Lucius felt a thrill of excitement, but also a tremor of apprehension. Glancing at the faces of his mother, Licinia, and Cornelia, he saw the same mixed reaction.

Gaius ended on a somber note. “Everywhere I traveled in the campaign for tribune, men asked me two questions: What persuaded you to enter the campaign? And do you not fear the same fate that befell your brother?

“To those citizens, and to you here tonight, I give this answer: It was a dream that stirred me to put aside fear and sloth, and to stop hiding from the world. In the dream, Tiberius called my name. He said to me, ‘Brother, why do you tarry? There’s no escaping destiny. One life and one death is appointed for us both-spend the one, and meet the other, and do both in the service of the people.’”

All the guests had heard this story before, during the election campaign. Still, hearing it again on this joyous occasion, they broke into rapturous applause. Many shed tears.

His victory speech concluded, Gaius walked among the guests, making a point to personally thank each one. Then he withdrew to a quiet corner with his mother, his wife, Menenia, and Lucius.

“How polished you’ve become!” said Menenia. “Do you know, I think you’re an even finer orator than your brother was. If only Blossius could hear you! It’s sweet that you honor him in your speeches.”

“But it does give me a shiver,” said Cornelia, “to hear that story about your dream of Tiberius. To speak so lightly of death…”

“It’s a great story, Mother. You saw how they loved it; I get that same reaction every time I tell it. Besides, it’s true. I really did have such a dream, and it changed my life.”

“But to prophesy your own death…”

“There’s no oracular vision involved. Of course I’ll die serving the people! Perhaps while making a speech in the Forum, perhaps while leading an army on the battlefield, perhaps while sleeping in my bed; perhaps tomorrow, or perhaps in fifty years. Like Tiberius, I’m a patriot and a politician. How else can I die, except in the service of Roma?”

“Oh, Gaius, such cynicism!” Cornelia wrinkled her nose, but she was clearly relieved by his glib answer.

Lucius, too, was secretly relieved. Perhaps Gaius’s cynicism was exactly the quality that would keep him alive.

122 B.C.

“But where is everyone?” Lucius circled the peristyle, gazing across the overgrown garden and into the various rooms surrounding it.

Gaius’s new house in the Subura was larger but not as lovely as the ancestral house of the Gracchi on the Palatine. For his second consecutive term as tribune, Gaius had deliberately chosen to move away from his mother and away from the Palatine, with its opulent residences. For his new home he had picked a rambling but ramshackle house in the downtrodden Subura district, so he could situate himself and his headquarters among the common citizens who most strongly supported him.

Lucius understood his friend’s political motivation for the move, but still he found the neighborhood depressing, with prostitutes on every corner, maimed war veterans begging in the streets, and a miasma of unpleasant odors. And why was the house so empty? Where were the state contractors and engineers, the foreign ambassadors, the magistrates, soldiers, and scholars who had typically thronged the house on the Palatine during Gaius’s first year as tribune, when his relentless legislative program and unflagging energy established him as the most powerful force in the state?

“They’ll be back,” said Gaius, emerging from behind one of the columns of the peristyle. He sounded uneasy, and tired. He had just returned from several weeks at the site of Carthage, where he had gone to lay the groundwork for a new Roman colony. A generation had passed since Tiberius won the mural crown for scaling the enemy walls; the salted fields around the razed city had become fertile again. The new Roman colony was to be called Junonia.

“How did things go…at Junonia?” Lucius asked.

“You sound a bit wary, Lucius. What have you heard?”

Lucius shrugged. “Rumors.”

“And not good ones, I’ll wager.” Gaius sighed. “I must confess, the taking of the auspices at the foundation ceremony went badly. High winds broke the standards, and blew away the sacrifices on the altars. That damned wind! The priest said he could hear Hannibal’s laughter in it.”

“And…one hears that wolves ran off with the city boundary markers,” said Lucius.

“That is a downright lie, put about by my enemies!” snapped Gaius. He shut his eyes and drew a breath. “Where is Licinius with that pipe of his, to calm me? The important thing is that, despite all obstacles, Carthage is being reborn as a colony of Roma.” He smiled. “There’ll be plenty of work for you down there, Lucius, if you ever run out of road-building projects here in Italy. What have you been up to while I was away?”

Lucius considered his reply, glad for a change of subject, then laughed out loud.

“If you have something to laugh at,” said Gaius, “then, by Hercules, share it with me!”

“Very well. A few days ago, I was down in the Forum Boarium. There was a long line of men and women queued up with vouchers to purchase their share from the state grain supply. Who should I see standing patiently in the line but that old toad, Piso Frugi.”

“Piso Frugi? I don’t believe it!”

“The very senator who argued most vehemently against establishing the grain subsidy! I stood there gaping at him for a bit, then I finally asked him, ‘How dare you benefit from a law you so bitterly opposed?’”

“And what did he say?”

“The old miser blinked at me, then turned up his nose. ‘If that thief Gaius Gracchus had stolen all my shoes and divided them among the citizenry, and the only way to get back even a single shoe was to stand in line with everyone else, I’d do so, purely as a matter of principle. Instead, he pilfers the treasury to buy grain for his minions. So, yes, I’ll stand in this line, because I intend to get back whatever share I can!’”

Gaius shook his head. “Unbelievable! Have you noticed how the men who argue most loudly against public benefits always elbow their way to the front of the line when those benefits are handed out?”

“My thought exactly!”

“What else has happened in Roma while I was away?” Gaius spoke lightly, but the look in his eyes lent weight to the question. When Lucius hesitated to answer, he grunted in exasperation. “Come, Lucius, tell me the worst! It’s Livius Drusus, isn’t it? What has that vile backstabber been up to?”

The trouble with Gaius’s fellow tribune had begun before Gaius left for Africa. Gaius’s departure should have been marked by a crowning achievement: the popular assembly’s approval of a law extending citizenship to Roma’s Italian allies. But at the last moment, the tribune Livius Drusus, who had always supported Gaius’s reforms, held rallies against the legislation, appealing in the basest way to the mob’s self-interest. “Do you think it’s hard now, finding a good spot at the theater?” he asked. “Just wait until all the Italians come to town to enjoy our festivals! Do you like standing in long lines at the public feasts, or queuing for the grain subsidy? Then you’ll love it when all those Italians slip ahead of you! Would you have every one of your privileges diluted, just so Gaius Gracchus can curry favor with his new friends?” When Drusus vetoed the legislation, he did so with popular support. It was a stinging defeat for Gaius on the eve of his departure.

“Drusus hasn’t been idle in your absence,” admitted Lucius. “In fact, he’s been relentless in his efforts to undermine your support. People say he ‘out-Gracchuses Gaius Gracchus.’”

“Explain.”

“First, he proposed establishing colonies for veterans on even more generous terms than those which you proposed. Then he accused you of exploiting the poor-”

“What!”

“-because your laws charge the people rent if they wish to farm state land.”

“The rent is nominal! It was a necessary concession to gain broader support for the law.”

“Drusus proposes legislation that allows the poor to farm state land free of charge.”

“And what do the hidebound reactionaries in the Senate say to that?”

“They support Drusus at every turn. Don’t you see? Drusus is their straw man. By ‘out-Gracchusing’ you, he steals your supporters. Temporarily, your enemies are willing to legislate against their own selfish interests, to throw a few bones to the common people.”

“But once I’ve been neutralized, they’ll be free to spit in the people’s faces and proceed as before.”

“Exactly. Sadly, the common citizens seem unable to see through Drusus’s facade. They’ve been won over by his blatant pandering.”

Gaius’s shoulders sagged. He looked utterly exhausted. “In my first year as tribune, nothing could go wrong. In my second year, nothing has gone right! I can only hope that in my third year-”

“A third term as tribune? Gaius, that’s not possible. You were allowed a second year only because of the legal technicality Tiberius hoped to exploit-not enough men ran to fill all ten positions. To pull that off required the cooperation of men who would normally have been your rivals.”

“And the same thing will happen again this year, because the people will demand it!”

Lucius thought otherwise, but held his tongue.

121 B.C.

“They’ll goad me to violence if they can. That’s what they want: to corner me, dishonor me, drive me to such desperation that I’ll strike back. Then they can destroy me, and claim they did it for the sake of Roma.”

Gaius nervously paced the pathway beneath the peristyle, circling the overgrown garden of his house in the Subura. Since failing to win a third term as tribune, his position had grown increasingly precarious.

“The election was a farce,” he said, “rife with illegalities-”

“This is old ground, Gaius. We’ve covered it many times before. The past can’t be undone.” Lucius, who had never been one to pace, was as still as the column he leaned against. His fretting took place inside, unseen.

When would Gaius stop going on about the stolen election? The hard fact was that his support had waned considerably by election day; the undermining strategy of his enemies had worked just as they planned. After the election, during his final days in office, Gaius’s influence had continued to dwindle. His frustration had given way to recklessness.

“I admit, it was a mistake-”

“A crucial mistake.”

“-when I ordered my supporters to demolish the wooden seats erected for that gladiator match. I had good reason to do so. A paid seating area for the rich obscures the view of the poor-”

“But you resorted to violence.”

“Property was damaged. No one was hurt, not seriously.”

“You incited a riot, Gaius. You played into the hands of your enemies. They call you a dangerous rabble-rouser, a violent demagogue.” Lucius sighed. They had been over this ground many times before.

Now that Gaius was out of office, his enemies were systematically repealing the laws he had passed, erasing his accomplishments. Today had brought the worst news yet. The Senate was scheduled to debate revoking the charter to establish Junonia. The colony that was to have been Gaius’s most enduring monument-establishing forever a link from his grandfather, the conqueror of Hannibal, to his brother, the first to scale the walls of Carthage, to himself, the founder of Junonia-was to be abandoned.

Gaius was bitter. He was also fearful. He had become convinced that his enemies would settle for nothing less than his blood.

“Is it true, what people are saying about Cornelia’s…charity?” said Lucius.

“What are you talking about?”

“Your mother set up a program to bring unemployed reapers from the countryside into Roma to look for work.”

“Everyone knows that. Even Piso Frugi didn’t object. The reapers provide cheap labor.”

“Some say the program is only a pretext, a way to swell the number of your loyal supporters in the city-just in case.”

“In case of what?”

“The violence that both sides are preparing for.” Lucius looked over his shoulder. Some of the reapers were in Gaius’s house at that very moment, milling about, restless, armed with staves and scythes. “What’s going to happen, Gaius?”

“Whatever it is, you’re well out of it, Lucius.”

“You never share your plans with me anymore. Ever since you returned from Junonia, you’ve shut me out. You hold meetings without me. You demolished the stands at the gladiator match without a word to me. I knew nothing in advance of Cornelia’s program to help the reapers.”

“If I’ve shut you out of my counsels, Lucius, I’ve done it for your own good. People no longer speak of us in the same breath. If you’re lucky, they’ll forget that you were once my strongest supporter among the Equestrians. You’re a businessman, not a politician, Lucius. You’re outside the Course of Honor. You pose no real threat to my enemies in the Senate. Why should you suffer my fate?”

“I’m your friend, Gaius.”

“You were also Tiberius’s friend, yet you never raised a finger to help him, or Blossius, for that matter.”

Lucius drew a sharp breath. Desperation brought out a petty, spiteful side of Gaius’s nature. “When Fortuna favored you, Gaius, I enjoyed the pleasures of your friendship. Fortuna may have turned her back on you, but I never will.”

Gaius shrugged. “Then come with me now.”

“Where?”

“To the Forum. There’s to be a protest against the motion to abandon Junonia.” Gaius seemed to receive a burst of fresh energy. He strode about the house, shouting and gathering his entourage. “Everybody, up on your feet! What are we waiting for? Enough idleness! Let’s head for the Senate House!”

On an impulse, Lucius stepped quickly into Gaius’s study and reached for a wax tablet and a stylus. Gaius was still the greatest orator of his generation. On this occasion, he might utter something that should not be forgotten. The metal stylus was a formidable instrument, elegantly made but quite solid and heavy in Lucius’s hand, and sharply pointed at one end.

The day was hot and oppressively humid, with thunder in the air.

As Gaius and his entourage approached the Senate House, they saw a tall, angular man leaving by a side door, carrying a shallow bowl. The man was Quintus Antyllius, a secretary to the consul Opimius. The bowl he carried was full of goat entrails. Before the start of each day’s business, the Senate witnessed a ritual sacrifice and the examination of the animal’s organs by an augur. The augury was done. Antyllius was disposing of the entrails.

As he passed by, Antyllius smirked at Gaius and his followers. “Get out of my way, street trash! Make way for a decent citizen.”

The insult pricked at the outrage Lucius normally held in check. Blood pounded in his temples. His face turned hot. “Who do you dare to call trash?” he demanded.

“This piece of dung.” Antyllius gestured at Gaius, using the bowl. Entrails sloshed out and spattered Gaius’s toga. Gaius wrinkled his nose and gave a start, which caused Antyllius to shriek with laughter.

Without thinking, acting purely on impulse, Lucius sprang forward. He plunged the metal stylus into Antyllius’s chest.

Men gasped. Antyllius dropped the bowl. Entrails spattered everywhere, causing the bystanders to scurry back. Antyllius clutched the stylus and tried to pull it from his chest, but the polished metal was too slippery with blood. The front of his toga turned red. He convulsed and fell backward, cracking his head on a paving stone.

Gaius gaped at the dead body, then at Lucius, unable to believe his eyes.

Someone in the street had witnessed the murder and ran inside to tell the senators. Soon they came rushing out, some from the main entrance, some from the side door, all converging on Gaius and his entourage. At their head was the consul Opimius. When he saw the body of Antyllius, his first expression was outrage. This was quickly followed by a look of barely suppressed elation.

“Murderer!” he shouted, glaring at Gaius. “You’ve killed a servant of the Senate while he was carrying out a sacred duty.”

“The man threw bloody entrails on a tribune of the plebs,” shouted Gaius. “Did you put him up to it?”

“You’re not a tribune any longer. You’re just a madman-and a murderer!”

Men on both sides began to shout insults. One of Gaius’s men ran to bring his supporters who were mustering at the front of the Senate House. When those men began to arrive, some of the senators thought they were being deliberately encircled. They panicked. Fistfights broke out.

A flash of lightning illuminated the scene with a garish light. Gaius screamed at his men to remain peaceful, but his words were swallowed by a deafening crack of thunder. A moment later, the sky opened. Hard rain pelted the crowd. Fierce winds whipped though the Forum. The rioters scattered and dispersed.

Raised on history books, Lucius remembered a tale from the city’s earliest days, and felt a shiver of dread. Romulus, the first king, had vanished in a blinding storm. Gaius had been accused of wanting a crown, and here was a storm the likes of which Lucius had never seen before. Lucius did not know the role that a previous Pinarius had played in the death of Romulus, but he knew that his mad, impulsive act had sealed the fate of Gaius Gracchus.

The next day, Lucius did something he had done only once before. He wore the family fascinum.

Occasionally, as a child, he had seen his mother wear it. When Lucius became a father, Menenia had ceremoniously passed the heirloom on to him; she explained its great antiquity and the little she knew of its origin, and she spoke of its power as a talisman to ward off evil. Lucius wore it on the day he received it, purely to please his mother, then put it away and forgot about it.

But that night, as the storm continued to rage, the fascinum appeared in his dreams, hovering before a great fire. When Lucius awoke, he searched for it among a tangle of castoff adornments he kept in a strongbox. He put the chain over his neck. The gold talisman, concealed beneath his tunic and toga, was cold against his breast. Lucius was not a particularly religious man, but if the fascinum possessed any protective powers whatsoever, of all the days of his life, this was surely the day to wear it.

To reach the house of Gaius in the Subura, Lucius had to cross the Forum. From the direction of the Senate House he heard echoes of shouting and weeping. A crowd was mourning Quintus Antyllius.

Gaius’s house was more crowded than he had ever seen it. The atmosphere was one of barely suppressed hysteria. There was a surprisingly buoyant sprit among the men who rushed madly this way and that, almost a sense of celebration. The last time Lucius had seen such a mixture of dread, anticipation, and camaraderie had been when he stood before the walls of Carthage with Tiberius, just before the final siege. There was a sense that a new world, for better or worse, was about to be born, and the knowledge that many among them would not be alive the next day to see it.

Gaius, standing among a group of reapers with scythes, saw him and waved him over.

“You came by way of the Forum?”

“Yes, but I stayed clear of the Senate House. I heard shouting, but I didn’t see-”

“Never mind.” Gaius’s tone was oddly aloof. “My surrogate eyes and ears run back and forth, bringing me fresh reports every few minutes. Quintus Antyllius has been laid on a bier before the Rostra. Various senators are competing to see which of them can deliver the most sanctimonious eulogy. The mourners weep and tear their hair. Meanwhile, I’m afraid some of my more eager supporters have gathered on the periphery. No violence yet, only some name-calling. Whenever the mourners cry ‘Antyllius!’ my men shout back ‘Tiberius!’ Of course, the corpse of my brother was dragged through the streets and dumped in the river. No one can accuse us of doing such a thing to Antyllius.”

“Gaius, what I did yesterday-it was unforgivable.”

“And utterly out of character!” Gaius smiled, but his eyes were sad. “The Furies themselves must have unleashed your rage-who knew you carried so much inside you? Well, Quintus Antyllius is no great loss to the world. Of course, Opimius blames me for the murder. Even now he’s haranguing his fellow senators with all sorts of wild allegations, claiming that I intend to murder every one of them. ‘The Gracchans are planning a bloodbath!’ he cries. Curious, how his sort accuses the opposition of the very crimes which they themselves are plotting.”

“Will it come to that, Gaius? A bloodbath?”

“Ask Opimius. He’s doing his best to whip the senators into a frenzy. He’s proposed a measure he calls the Ultimate Decree. Sounds menacing, doesn’t it? It will allow the consuls ‘to take all necessary measures to defend the state.’ In other words, they’ll be empowered to kill any citizen on the spot, without a trial.”

“Gaius, this can’t be happening.”

“And yet, the gods have allowed it. A simpleminded fellow like Opimius doesn’t realize that something like this so-called Ultimate Decree will never be used only once. They’re opening Pandora’s box. Allow the state to murder its citizens once, and the same thing will happen again and again and again.” Gaius’s glib tone suddenly gave way and his voice cracked. “Alas, Lucius! What’s to become of our beloved Republic? Our wretched, tattered, hopelessly lost Republic?”

He took Lucius by the hands for a moment, then pulled back and turned to address the reapers and the others nearby. “All of you, gather whatever weapons you have! Philocrates, bring me my sword! I’m not going to wait for them to attack me in my home. I shall go to the Forum and say a prayer before the statue of my father.”

Licinia came running. She clutched his toga. “No, husband! You’re safe in this house, where your supporters can protect you.”

“Only the gods can protect me now.”

“Go unarmed, then! If you go out armed, with armed men around you, there’ll surely be violence, and they’ll put the blame on you.”

“I’d rather die in battle than like a sheep offered for sacrifice.” He flashed a crooked smile.

“Gaius, this is no joke! The same men who killed Tiberius are determined to murder you, as well.”

“While I breathe, I’m still a free citizen of Roma. I won’t be a prisoner in my home.” Gaius pulled away from her and moved toward the door.

Licinia was wracked with sobs. Lucius attempted to put his arm around her, but she shook him off, refusing to be consoled. As the last of Gaius’s entourage disappeared from the vestibule, Lucius went running after them.

As Gaius proceeded through the streets of the Subura, shutters flew opened. Men cheered him, but few of them joined the entourage. Lucius looked about nervously. Where were the vast throngs who once had promised to defend Gaius to the death? They seemed to have melted away. As the small band entered the Forum, idlers and bystanders gawked with curiosity, then scattered, sensing trouble and fleeing from it.

Before the statue of his father, Gaius paused for a long time, gazing up at the face of the elder Tiberius. His loyal young slave Philocrates stood to his left. Lucius stood to his right. Gaius spoke in a dreamy voice.

“My grandfather cast a long shadow; men know me as the grandson of Scipio Africanus, not the son of Tiberius Gracchus. But my father was also a great Roman. His victories in Spain established a peace that lasted twenty-five years. His embassies to Asia made him the confidante of kings. He was twice elected consul, twice awarded triumphs, and served as censor. My brother would have been as great, if he had lived. I had hoped that I might-” His voice broke. Tears fell from his eyes and streamed down his cheeks. “Did we live and die for nothing?”

Lucius heard shouting from the direction of the Senate House, followed by the sounds of a street fight. The noise came nearer. “Gaius, we must get back to your house. There aren’t enough of us to take them on.”

Gaius gave a start. He pricked up his ears, then shook his head. “The fighting has moved between us and the Subura. We can’t go back. This is where I’ll make my stand. This is where I’ll fall.”

Lucius’s heart sank, but he took a deep breath. “I won’t desert you, Gaius.”

“You’re a true friend, Lucius.”

Armed men appeared in the distance. They spotted Gaius, gave a shout, and ran toward him. The entourage was vastly outnumbered. Men looked to Gaius for orders, but he stood as stiff and silent as his father’s statue. Some of his supporters panicked and began to flee in all directions.

At last, Gaius cried out in despair. “Lucius! Philocrates! All of you, follow me!” He cast off his toga, as did Lucius and the others who were wearing them, the better to run in his under-tunic.

With the mob at their heels, they raced from the Forum. They skirted the slope of the Palatine and sprinted across the Circus Maximus. In the narrow streets of the Aventine, they lost their pursuers. Near the crest of the hill, they came to the Temple of Diana.

Gaius ran into the temple. The handful of supporters who followed watched him fall to his knees before the statue of the goddess. “Queen of the hunt!” he cried, gasping for breath. “Daughter of Jupiter, sister of Apollo! Accept this sacrifice!” He placed the pommel of his sword on the floor and pointed the blade toward his chest. Before he could fall on it, two of his followers rushed to stop him. One of them gripped his shoulders and pulled him back. The other snatched the sword and handed it to Philocrates.

Gaius wept. He beat his fists against the floor. “Ungrateful, treacherous Romans, I put a curse on you!” he shouted. “I pointed the way to freedom, and you turned against me. I risked everything for you, and now you abandon me. Be slaves forever, then, to the murderers in the Senate!”

It seemed to Lucius that a madness had come over his friend. Gaius had always been a brave man and a fighter, yet now he seemed determined to die by his own hand, without a struggle. Gaius had been utterly sure of his cause, yet now he renounced it; he had been utterly devoted to the common citizens of Roma, yet now he cursed them. Lucius was appalled, but he could not judge Gaius. He himself had been seized by a madness the previous day, when he struck Antyllius dead without thinking.

A straggler ran into the temple. “They’re close behind me!” he shouted. “They’re coming this way!”

Lucius and Philocrates pulled Gaius to his feet. They turned him toward the entrance. In a daze, he ran out into the street. His pursuers saw him and shouted. The chase resumed.

For Lucius, the headlong flight was like a nightmare. The winding streets of the Aventine, the old fountain at the mouth of the Appian Aqueduct, the salt warehouses along the Tiber, and the bustling markets of the Forum Boarium, all these places were utterly familiar yet utterly strange. Seeing them pass by, men laughed and cheered them on, like spectators watching a footrace. Others jeered at the desperate little entourage, and pelted them with radishes and turnips and bits of bones and hooves from the market.

At the bridge across the Tiber, some of the men stopped and turned about, determined to make a stand. They begged Gaius to keep running, vowing to hold the bridge as long as they could. Accompanied only by Philocrates and Lucius, Gaius reached the far side of the Tiber just as his pursuers arrived at the bridge. The sounds of battle echoed across the river.

The west bank of the Tiber was largely wild and undeveloped. The three of them left the road, thinking to disappear amid the dense foliage. A narrow pathway led them to a stand of tall trees. The soft earth seemed to swallow the sound of their footsteps. Amid the leafy shadows, a beam of sunlight fell upon a stone altar in a small clearing. Lucius felt more than ever that he was moving through a dream.

“What place is this?” he whispered.

“The Grove of the Furies,” said Gaius in a hollow voice. “Tisiphone, Megaera, and Allecto: the vengeful sisters who punish sinful mortals with madness. Only black sheep can be sacrificed to them. Do you see their images on the altar? They carry whips and torches. Their hair is made of snakes. They’re older than Jupiter. They were born of the blood that was spilled when Cronus the Titan castrated his father Uranus-born of a crime of a son against his father. Yet I’ve always honored my father, and my grandfather! Why have the Furies led me here?”

He dropped to his knees before the altar. Shouts echoed amid the treetops. Their pursuers were drawing near.

“Philocrates, do you have my sword?”

The young slave quailed. “Master, please-”

“Put an end to me, Philocrates. At the Temple of Diana, I lost my nerve. I let them stop me. Do it for me, Philocrates. Do it now!” He threw back his head and raised his chest.

“Master, I can’t bear to do it.”

“I command you, Philocrates!”

Weeping and trembling, the young slave turned the blade on himself and fell forward. His cry of anguish reverberated though the woods. The pursuers heard and shouted to one another. They were very close.

Gaius knelt over the slave. He stroked the youth’s hair, then pulled the sword from his chest. He looked up at Lucius and extended the hilt toward him.

“This is what the Furies want,” Gaius whispered. “This is what they demand of you, Lucius. You brought about this crisis, when you slew Antyllius. Now you must end it.”

“By doing the thing I least desire in all the world to do?” cried Lucius.

“Would you allow me to be tortured and torn to pieces by my enemies?”

Lucius took the sword. He could not look at Gaius’s face. He circled him, knelt behind him, and clutched him tightly with one arm. He raised the blade to Gaius’s throat.

With his last breath, Gaius hissed a curse. “Let them be slaves of the Senate forever!”

Lucius drew the blade across Gaius’s throat. Gaius convulsed. Blood flowed warm and wet over Lucius’s encircling arm.

Lucius drew back and staggered to his feet. Still twitching, Gaius’s body fell beside that of the dead slave. Lucius dropped the blade between them.

He stepped back into the shadows and hid himself amid the foliage just as the pursuers entered the little clearing.

“Numa’s balls! Dead already!” one of them shouted. “Look at the two of them-he let the slave kill him, then the slave killed himself. The coward cheated us!”

“Doesn’t matter,” said another. “The bounty’s just as good, no matter who killed him. The consul Opimius promised a fat reward for the head of each and every citizen on his list, and the fattest reward of all is for the head of Gaius Gracchus. I claim it!”

Beating back the others with a snarl, the man raised his sword and hacked at Gaius’s neck until the head came free. He lifted it by the hair and swung the trophy in a circle over his head, whooping with triumph. Blood and bits of gore spattered the onlookers and stained the altar. A few drops penetrated the foliage and struck Lucius in the face, but he did not flinch.

“What about the slave?” someone said, giving the corpse a kick.

“Worthless. Leave it for now. Back to the city, my friends, where there’s plenty more killing to do!”

Nauseated, burning with anger, paralyzed by fear, Lucius remained silent and unseen in the shadows. After the men had gone, he reached up to touch his breast, and felt the fascinum beneath his tunic. Amazed that he was still alive, he whispered a prayer to whatever power had seen fit to protect him.

In the days that followed, under sanction of the Ultimate Decree, more than three thousand Roman citizens were put to death. The Gracchan movement was obliterated.

Remarkably, Lucius survived the massacre unscathed. For many days he remained secluded in his house, waiting for a banging on the door that never came. His name never appeared on the official list of enemies of the state. He could not account for this omission. To be sure, toward the end, his relationship with Gaius had grown less public and more private. For whatever reason, Gaius’s enemies overlooked him, a stroke of good fortune over which Lucius never ceased to puzzle.

It seemed to Lucius there was no rhyme or reason to his destiny. He had shunned Tiberius and Blossius, and by doing so had survived their follies, to his shame and regret; he had boldly embraced the cause of Gaius, and yet had survived his downfall, to even greater shame and regret. Lucius concluded that his was a charmed life, curiously immune to ordinary reversals of fortune. In the years that remained to him, he turned his back on politics and devoted himself to his career, which kept him very busy; there were always more roads to be built. He also became more religious. Each night, before going to bed, he said a prayer of thanksgiving to the god of the fascinum who had saved his life when death was very near. It was in his bed that he died many years later, a beloved husband and father, an accomplished builder of roads, and a much respected member of the Equestrian order.

The consul Opimius was eventually brought to trial for perpetrating the slaughter of Roman citizens, but he was acquitted; the Ultimate Decree was upheld as a legal act, and thus shielded him from punishment. Later in his career, however, he was convicted for taking bribes while serving as ambassador to King Jugurtha of Numidia. Opimius became a bitter and much hated man in his twilight years, and he died in disgrace. His legacy to Roma was his authorship of the Ultimate Decree, which, as Gaius had predicted, was to be invoked repeatedly in the increasingly chaotic, increasingly bloody years to come.

Following the example of her father at the end of his life, Cornelia departed from Roma and retired to a villa on the coast, at a promontory called Misenum, taking Menenia with her for companionship. At Misenum she entertained visiting dignitaries and philosophers, and became legendary for her Stoic fortitude in the face of so much tragedy. To those who asked, she was happy to share her memories of her father, but she was even happier to talk about her sons. She spoke of Tiberius and Gaius without grief or tears, as if she were speaking of great men from the early days of the Republic. After her death, a statue of her was placed in the city and became a beloved shrine for the women of Roma.

Cornelia had often expressed her desire to be remembered not as the daughter of Africanus, but as the mother of the Gracchi. So it came to pass. In death, the two brothers remained as fervently beloved, and as viciously hated, as they had been in life, and the double tragedy of their deaths made them figures of legend. Like their mother, they were immortalized with statues, and shrines were established on the spots where they died.

Either as exemplars of evil or paragons of virtue, the names of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus would be invoked in speeches and debates for as long as the Republic would endure.