Redemption, if
redemption was to be hoped for, could come only from free citizens in the
country districts whose manners and whoso minds were still uncontaminated,
in whom the ancient habits of life still survived, who still believed in
the gods, who were contented to follow the wholesome round of honest
labor. The numbers of such citizens were fast dwindling away before the
omnivorous appetite of the rich for territorial aggrandizement. To rescue
the land from the monopolists, to renovate the old independent yeomanry,
to prevent the free population of Italy, out of which the legions had been
formed which had built up the Empire, from being pushed out of their
places and supplanted by foreign slaves, this, if it could be done, would
restore the purity of the constituency, snatch the elections from the
control of corruption, and rear up fresh generations of peasant soldiers
to preserve the liberties and the glories which their fathers had won.
CHAPTER III.
Tiberius Gracchus was born about the year 164 B.C. He was one of twelve
children, nine of whom died in infancy, himself, his brother Caius, and
his sister Cornelia being the only survivors. His family was plebeian, but
of high antiquity, his ancestors for several generations having held the
highest offices in the Republic. On the mother's side he was the grandson
of Scipio Africanus.
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