The government might well fear a scandalous scene--the Forum with its lanes and porticoes crowded by a snarling holiday crowd, the laudation of the speakers interrupted by gibes and howls, the free-fight that would probably follow the performance of the obsequies.
But suppression means rumour. The mystery was profoundly enjoyed by this and subsequent ages. Every name that political or domestic circumstances could conveniently suggest, was brought into connection with Scipio's death. Caius Gracchus,[466] Fulvius Flaccus,[467] Caius Papirius Carbo[468] were all indifferently mentioned. Suspicion clung longest to Carbo, probably as the man who had lately come into the most direct conflict with his supposed victim; even Carbo's subsequent conversion to conservatism could not clear his name, and his guilt seems to have been almost an article of faith amongst the optimates of the Ciceronian period. But there were other versions which hinted at domestic crime. Did not Cornelia have an interest in removing the man who was undoing the work of her son, and might she not have had a willing accomplice in Scipio's wife Sempronia?[469] It was believed that this marriage of arrangement had never been sanctioned by love; Sempronia was plain and childless, and the absence of a husband's affection may have led her to think only of her duties as a daughter and a sister.[470] People who were too sane for these extravagances, but were yet unwilling to accept the prosaic solution of a natural death and give up the pleasant task of conjecture, suggested that Scipio had found death by his own hand. The motive assigned was the sense of his inability to keep the promises which he had made.[471] These promises may have been held to be certain suggestions for the amelioration of the condition of the Latin and Italian allies.