The example of the first great re-action of nations, too late aroused, was set by Greece in the war of the Achaian league. It terminated like all the preceding wars;--Corinth was consumed, and its destruction involved that of an infinite number of noble and beautiful works of art, belonging to the better ages of Greece. Among the nations of the North and West that lived under a yet free and natural form of government, the Spaniards distinguished themselves by a peculiar obstinacy of resistance. Scipio was unable to conquer Numantia; the people who defended their liberty behind this rampart, set fire to the city, and the remaining defenders devoted themselves to a voluntary death. In the public triumph which the Romans celebrated on this occasion, they were able to exhibit only a few brave Lusitanians of a gigantic size. Now commenced the civil wars:--the first was occasioned by Tiberius Gracchus, then leader of the popular party at Rome. To undertake the complete justification of any one of the leading men in the Roman parties, would be an arduous, not to say impracticable task; yet we may positively assert of the elder Gracchus, that he was the best man of his party; as the same observation will apply to the Scipios in the opposite party of the Patricians. The proposal of Gracchus was this--that the rights of Roman citizens should be extended to the rest of Italy. It was in the very nature of things that such a change, or at least one very similar, should now take place, as in fact it did somewhat later; for after the conquest of so many provinces, the disproportion between the one all-ruling city and the vast regions which it had subdued, was much too great to continue long. The armed insurrection of all the Italian nations that occurred soon after, sufficiently proves of what vital importance this measure was considered. But the pride of the ruling Patricians was extremely offended at this claim--they regarded it as an attempt to subvert the ancient constitution of the country--and, in the revolt that ensued, Tiberius Gracchus lost his life. From that time forward the principles apparently contended for on both sides were mere pretexts--whether it were the maintenance of the law, and of the ancient constitution, as asserted by the Patricians--or the just claims of the people, and the necessary changes which the altered circumstances of the times demanded, as alleged by the opposite party. It was now an open struggle for ascendancy between a few factious leaders and their partisans--a civil war carried on between fierce and formidable Oligarchs.