The slave immediately
after killed himself, and fell down upon the body of his beloved
master. The pursuers coming up, cut off the head of Gracchus, and
placed it for a while as a trophy on a spear. 15. Soon after, one
Septimule'ius carried it home, and taking out the brain artfully
filled it with lead, in order to increase its weight, and then
received of the consul seventeen pounds of gold as his recompence.
16. Thus died Cai'us Gracchus. He is usually impeached by historians,
as guilty of sedition; but from what we see of his character, the
disturbance of public tranquillity was rather owing to his opposers
than to him; so that, instead of calling the tumults of that time the
sedition of the Gracchi, we should rather call them the sedition of
the senate against the Gracchi; since the efforts of the latter were
made in vindication of a law to which the senate had assented; and the
designs of the former were supported by an extraneous armed power from
the country, that had never before meddled in the business of
legislation, and whose introduction gave a most irrecoverable blow to
the constitution.
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