taken were put to torture, and then pitched down from the rocks of Tauromenium.

Near the centre of Sicily and near one of the sources of the southern Himera, the modern Salso, stands the mountain of Enna, or Henna, as the Romans generally write it, perhaps the highest point in Sicily next to Aetna. The summit of the mountain is flat: the sides are precipitous and only accessible in a few places. From the south a long winding road leads to the level on the top, and there the modern town of Castro Giovanni stands, on the northern edge of the mountain plain. The place is well supplied with water.

This mountain fortress could not be taken by assault and the consul after investing it waited for the slow results of hunger. Cleon who commanded in Henna was captured in a sally after fighting heroically. He died of his wounds in the Roman camp and his dead body was exposed in view of the besieged. Shortly after the place was treacherously betrayed to the consul. Twenty thousand slaves, as Orosius states it, perished at Tauromenium and Henna. Eunous with his guard of a thousand men fled to some of the rugged parts of Sicily, but he was closely pursued by the consul, and escape being impossible and mercy hopeless, his men killed one another after barbaric fashion. The slave king was a coward and unworthy to be the ruler of the brave men who had risen against their masters. He was dragged out of a hole in which he had hid himself with four of his servants, his cook, breadmaker, the man who rubbed him in the bath and the court fool, for he had not neglected even this appendage of royalty. He was cast into prison at Morgantia in Sicily, or as another story reports, which is less credible, he was taken to Rome. He lingered in his chains till he was devoured by the vermin of his own body, and thus added one more to the examples recorded in antiquity of this loathsome disease. It is not said what became of his queen.

The pacification of the whole island followed the capture of Henna. Rupilius, who was now proconsul (B.c. 131), had the assistance of ten commissioners from Rome, with whom he settled the affairs of Sicily on a durable foundation. Sicily contributed largely to the revenue of Rome, and it was neces

sary to provide for the raising of the taxes, which, we may assume, were not paid during the rebellion. The ordinances of Rupilius which were named Lex Rupilia, became the basis of the administration of the island. We shall have occasion to speak of them again when we treat of the government of Sicily under C. Verres and his prosecution for malversation. Rupilius, who put an end to the slave war, and then was the wise legislator of Sicily, had been employed in the earlier part of his life under the publicani or farmers of the public revenue. Rupilius was a friend of P. Scipio Africanus the younger, to whose influence he was indebted for the consulship. He was rewarded for his services in Sicily with an ovation only, a kind of triumph which was considered sufficient honour for a victory over slaves.

Florus in his chapter on this Servile war in Sicily (iii. 19) says that M. Perperna took Henna and put an end to the war. Some critics have supposed that the name of Perperna stands in the text of Florus through a mistake of the transcribers of the manuscripts; but the name Perperna occurs in two different passages in this chapter, and the error may be due to Florus. It is not a matter worth notice, except so far as some modern writers still follow Florus, whose blunders, one would suppose, would hardly be repeated now. There is no evidence, except in Florus, that Perperna even served in this slave war; for the entry in the Capitoline Fasti, as they are now printed, is only foisted in on the authority of Florus.

The rich slaveholders of Sicily and the Italian capitalists were the great sufferers by this rebellion. The poorer sort of free Sicilians had little to lose. They had no sympathy with the rich whom they envied for their wealth, and hated for their pride and arrogance. Thus envy had its satisfaction in seeing the indolent and luxurious brought down to the low estate of those whom they had formerly despised; for insurrection and riot, as wise men have observed, may make the rich poor, but never make the poor rich.

A passage in Diodorus records a fact which, if true, shows that after the first violence of the outbreak, the slaves were directed by abler heads. Probably Achaeus may have done

great service in restoring some order among the rebels, while Eunous was playing the king. The insurgents began to think of their own subsistence. They neither burnt the farmhouses in the country nor the property in them, nor did they destroy the food which was stored up. They also did not disturb those who were engaged in agriculture, because they knew that these men were working for others as well as for themselves. All this would prove that after the rebellion was organized, the island was really in a better state than it had been during the irregular disturbances which preceded it; and that the Greeks of Sicily alone could not have suppressed the rising. Without Roman help, the slaves might have become masters and the masters slaves. . But the poor free men who envied the rich joined in the work of plunder, and going into the country on the pretence of looking after the insurgent slaves, they robbed the farms and even burnt the houses.

It has been sometimes said that the damage done by the ravages of war is soon repaired; but this is a very superficial view, and it is not true. The effects of a long and wasteful war last for generations, and are felt even when they are not seen. In Sicily the rich proprietors lost their wealth, and they lost many of their labourers too, nor would they have the means of replacing them, except by the slow increase of the survivors under better discipline and better treatment. The island was now quiet for thirty years.

CHAPTER X.

TIBERIUS SEMPRONIUS GRACCHUS.

B.C. 133.

DURING the siege of Numantia there was a revolution at Rome.

The treaty of the consul Mancinus with the Numantini (B.c. 137) brought disgrace on himself; and his quaestor Ti. Gracchus, as we have seen, narrowly escaped punishment. It may be true, as it is said, that Gracchus in his danger promised the people that he would do something for their advantage when he should be tribune of the plebs; and that he hated both the senate and the nobles for what they had done in the matter of the Numantine treaty. But we cannot accept the conclusion of Velleius that the surrender of Mancinus was the cause of the reforms of Gracchus, or, as he expresses it, that Gracchus being deeply offended at the rejection of the treaty which he had made, and fearing the danger either of a trial or a punishment like that of Mancinus, withdrew from the party of the 'good' on being elected tribune, and by promising the Roman citizenship to all Italy and by promulgating his Agrarian laws brought the commonwealth into extreme danger. This is the writing of a careless and prejudiced man, who in one short rhetorical period mingles truth and falsehood, which a careful examination of the authorities enables us easily to separate.

In B.C. 133 Ti. Gracchus was one of the tribuni plebis, having entered on his office at the usual time on the tenth of December in the preceding year. He was a young man, not quite thirty at the time of his death, as Plutarch says, and

nine years older than his brother Caius. Tiberius had been quaestor in B.C. 137, and he was then only in his twentysixth year, if he was in his thirtieth year in B.C. 133. There was a Lex Villia or Annalis of B.C. 180, which, as Livy reports it, fixed the age at which a man might be a candidate for any magistracy; but we have no evidence of the age which the Lex Villia required in a candidate for the tribuneship, nor indeed whether it fixed any age. It is possible that the Lex only applied to the curule magistracies, and we are enabled to collect from examples in Roman history what age was required for each curule office. If those critics are right, who affirm that the quaestorship could not be held before a man was in his thirty-first year, Tiberius was in his thirty-fifth year when he was tribune. Tiberius was the son of Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus and Cornelia, the daughter of Scipio who conquered Hannibal. The father had a triumph as propraetor for his victories over the Celtiberi, and another triumph for his services in Sardinia as consul. In B.C. 169 he was censor, and consul a second time in в.c. 163. After their father's death Tiberius and Caius were carefully brought up by their mother, and they received the best education that could be had in those times. Cornelia was herself a learned woman. Cicero had read her letters, and Quintilian commends the style. She was well acquainted with the literature of the Greeks, and she gave her sons the best Greek teachers. Diophanes of Mitylene, the most accomplished rhetorician of the age, was the master of Tiberius in oratory. In company with C. Carbo, Tiberius was also a hearer of M. Aemilius Lepidus Porcina, consul B.C. 137, who mismanaged affairs in Spain. Tiberius was a most distinguished orator, says Cicero, following the testimony of those who had heard Tiberius speak, for the style of his extant orations did not satisfy Cicero's rhetorical taste. He describes the orations of Gracchus as not ornate enough, but acute and full of good sense.

Tiberius accompanied his brother-in-law P. Scipio Aemilianus to the siege of Carthage in B.C. 146. The historian C. Fannius, quoted by Plutarch, says that himself and Tiberius were the first who mounted the enemy's wall.