Ruthless gossip accused Cornelia of conspiring with her daughter, Scipio’s deformed and unloved wife, to murder him. In the face of these calamities she sought consolation by devoting herself to her surviving son, the last of her “jewels.” The murder of Tiberius aroused in Caius no mere spirit of vengeance, but a resolve to complete his brother’s work. He had served with intelligence and courage under Aemilianus at Numantia, and he had won the admiration of all groups by the integrity of his conduct and the simplicity of his life. His passionate temperament, all the more vehement on occasion because so long controlled, made him the greatest of Roman orators before Cicero, and opened almost any office to him in a society where eloquence served only next to bravery in the advancement of men. In the fall of 124 he was elected tribune.
More realistic than Tiberius, Caius understood that no reform can endure which is opposed by the balance of economical or political power in the state. He aimed to bring four classes to his support: the peasantry, the army, the proletariat, and the businessmen. He won the first by renewing the agrarian legislation of his brother, extending its application to state-owned land in the provinces, restoring the land board, and personally attending to its operations. He fed the ambitions of the middle classes by establishing new colonies in Capua, Tarentum, Narbo, and Carthage, and by developing these as thriving centers of trade. He pleased the soldiers by passing a bill that they should be clothed at the public expense. He gained the gratitude of the urban masses by his lex frumentaria, or corn law, which committed the government to distribute wheat at six and one third asses per modius (thirty-nine cents a peck—half the market price) to all who asked for it. It was a measure shocking to old Roman ideas of self-reliance, and destined to play a vital role in Roman history. Caius believed that the grain dealers were charging the public twice the cost of production, and that his measure, through the economy of unified operation, would involve no loss to the state. In any case, the law turned the poor freemen of Rome from client supporters of the aristocracy into defenders of the Gracchi, as later of Marius and Caesar; it was the foundation stone of that democratic movement which would reach its peak in Clodius, and die at Actium.
Caius’ fifth measure sought to assure the power of his party by ending the tradition whereby the richer classes in the Centurial Assembly voted first; hereafter the centuries were on each occasion to vote in an order determined by lot. He appeased the business class by giving them the exclusive right to serve as jurors in trials for provincial malfeasance, i.e., they were hereafter to be in large measure their own judges. He whetted their appetites by proposing a tax of one tenth, to be collected by them, on all the produce of Asia Minor. He enriched contractors, and reduced unemployment, by a program of road building in every part of Italy. Altogether these laws, despite the political trickery that colored some of them, formed the most constructive body of legislation offered to Rome before Caesar.
Armed with such varied support, Caius was able to override custom and win election to a second and successive tribunate. Probably it was now that he sought to “pack” the Senate by adding to its 300 members 300 more to be chosen from the business class by the Assembly. He proposed also to extend the full franchise to all the freemen of Latium, and a partial franchise to the remaining freemen of Italy. This, his boldest move toward a broader democracy, was his first strategic error. The voters showed no enthusiasm for sharing their privileges, even with men of whom only a small minority could have attended their assemblies in Rome. The Senate acted on its opportunity. Almost ignored by Caius, and reduced to apparent impotence, it saw in the brilliant tribune only a demagogic tyrant extending his personal power through the reckless distribution of state property and funds. Suddenly finding an ally in the jealous proletariat of Rome, and taking advantage of Caius’ absence in establishing his colony at Carthage, the Senatorial party suggested to another tribune, Marcus Livius Drusus, that he should win over the new peasantry by a bill canceling the tax laid upon their lands in the Gracchan laws; and that he should at once please and weaken the proletariat by proposing the formation of twelve new colonies in Italy, each to take 3000 men from Rome. The Assembly readily passed the bills; and when Caius returned he found his leadership challenged at every step by the popular Drusus. He sought a third term as tribune but was defeated; his friends charged that he had been elected but that the ballots had been falsified. He counseled his followers against violence and retired to private life.
In the following year the Senate proposed the abandonment of the colony at Carthage; all sides interpreted the measure, openly or privately, as the first move in a campaign to repeal the Gracchan laws. Some of Caius’ adherents attended the Assembly armed, and one of them cut down a conservative who threatened to lay hands upon Caius. On the morrow the senators appeared in full battle array, each with two armed slaves, and attacked the popular party entrenched on the Aventine. Caius did his best to quiet the tumult and avert further violence. Failing, he fled across the Tiber; overtaken, he ordered his servant to kill him; the slave obeyed and then killed himself. A friend cut off Caius’ head, filled it with molten lead, and brought it to the Senate, which had offered a reward of its weight in gold.9 Of Caius’ supporters 250 fell in the fight, 3000 more were put to death by Senatorial decree. The city mob that he had befriended made no protest when his corpse, and those of his followers, were flung into the river; it was busy plundering his house.10 The Senate forbade Cornelia to wear mourning for her son.