The Senators had made a practice of acquitting all criminals of their own class, and, by acquitting themselves thus shamefully, they had become guilty of the grossest corruption; but the equites were frequently regardless of equity, and were found leaning with undue leniency towards offenders of their own order. Gracchus had now become the popular idol, but he never had an idle hour, and was always busy in building up a reputation for himself by the construction of works of permanent utility. He knew that general occupation is necessary to public content, and he felt that as long as he could keep the hands of the multitude employed on bricks and mortar, he was, in reality, cementing his own power. This policy placed considerable patronage at his command, and he rallied round him a crowd of contractors and artificers, who, but for his power of giving them something better to do, would, perhaps, have been contracting the bad habit of political agitation, or resorting to every kind of revolutionary artifice.
The greatest political work of Caius was that in which he did the least; and his legislative successes sink into insignificance by the side of the real grandeur of his extensive failure. This was his attempt to extend the franchise to all the Italians, and the other allies; but Rome refused to aid him in the grand design, and determined to rivet upon Italy those Italian irons with which Rome at a future period was destined to burn her fingers. So popular was Caius Gracchus, that, upon his re-election to office, the people, who could not get near enough to the Campus Martius on account of the crowd, voted for him from the tops of houses or unfinished buildings; and many came up to the poll by climbing an adjacent scaffold.
He who would keep himself constantly sailing before the wind raised by the breath of public applause, must be for ever on some new tack; for no airs are more variable than those which the people are apt to give themselves. Caius Gracchus was soon destined to discover the fact that, amid the storms of political life, the highest point can be safely occupied by none but the political weathercock. He had too much rigid inflexibility to turn with every breeze; and instead of being moved by each passing gust, he was simply dis-gusted by the vacillation exhibited.