The critical days of any contest are seldom those of its final culmination. The end has generally been long foreshadowed. The time at which the last stand for the Roman liberties was made was not during the civil wars of the last century before Christ, but at the time of the attempted reforms of the previous century. The years in which the great crisis of the Roman republic was reached were those from 134 to 121 B.C., the years marked by the activities of the Gracchi.
The story of the Gracchi constitutes one of the strangest, grandest, and saddest stories in the whole course of history. It is a double story of sacrifice, suffering, and untiring labor; of temporary success, of ultimate death and failure--but a failure which stands forth more glorious in the pages of history than the greatest successes of others. It is the story of two brothers, possessed of wealth and of high rank and connections, in the richest and most powerful country of the world--men to whom was open either an easy path along the old established road to the highest honors of the Roman state or the life of luxurious ease so eagerly embraced by the majority of the rich young Romans of that day. Casting aside both these choices, and recognizing the dangers of their native state, these brothers sacrificed all in an attempt to restore to Rome those conditions which in the past had built up her greatness, and to secure a redress of those conditions which had made the status of the great mass of the citizens of the "Mistress of the World" hardly superior to that of the very serfs. It is a story of the most aggravated selfishness and relentless hatred on the part of those favored few whose special and illegal interests were threatened by the attacks of the young reformers. It is also, unfortunately, to too great an extent a story of ingratitude and cowardice on the part of those for whose interest Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus sacrificed themselves in vain.
The Gracchi were fortunate in having as father one of those Romans who still retained the Roman virtues of an earlier age,--patriotism, bravery, and honor. Not only had the administration of the elder Gracchus of the offices of consul and censor at Rome been free from corruption, but his administration of the governorship of the Province of Ebro had been of great service to his native country and had, furthermore, endeared his memory to the Spaniards themselves.