CHAPTER XVII.
SECTION I.
FROM THE DESTRUCTION OF CARTHAGE TO THE END OF THE SEDITION OF THE GRACCHI .-- U.C.

621.
Seldom is faction's ire in haughty minds Extinguished but by death; it oft, like flame Suppressed, breaks forth again, and blazes higher .-- _May._ 1.

The Romans being now left without a rival, the triumphs and the spoils of Asia introduced a taste for splendid expense, and this produced avarice and inverted ambition.2.The two Gracchi were the first who saw this strange corruption among the great, and resolved to repress it, by renewing the Licinian law, which had enacted that no person in the state should possess above five hundred acres of land.
3.

Tibe'rius Gracchus, the elder of the two, was, both for the advantages of his person and the qualities of his mind, very different from Scipio, of whom he was the grandson.

He seemed more ambitious of power than desirous of glory; his compassion for the oppressed was equal to his animosity against the oppressors; but unhappily his passions, rather than his reason, operated even in his pursuits of virtue; and these always drove him beyond the line of duty.4.