The consul Scaevola was urged to have the traitor put to death at once.

When that temperate man, by no means averse to reform in itself, indignantly refused the equally irrational and barbarous request, the consular Publius Scipio Nasica, a harsh and vehement aristocrat, summoned those who shared his views to arm themselves as they could and to follow him.

Almost none of the country people had come into town for the elections; the people of the city timidly gave way, when they saw men of quality rushing along with fury in their eyes, and legs of chairs and clubs in their hands.
Gracchus attempted with a few attendants to escape.

But in his flight he fell on the slope of the Capitol, and was killed by a blow on the temples from the bludgeon of one of his furious pursuers -- Publius Satureius and Lucius Rufus afterwards contested the infamous honour--before the statues of the seven kings at the temple of Fidelity; with him three hundred others were slain, not one by weapons of iron.

When evening had come on, the bodies were thrown into the Tiber; Gaius vainly entreated that the corpse of his brother might be granted to him for burial.