Tiberius Gracchus   

first came forward as a legislator.
Of the land which the Romans gained by conquest from their neighbours,
part they sold publicly, and turned the remainder into common; this
common land they assigned to such of the citizens as were poor and
indigent, for which they were to pay only a small acknowledgment into
the public treasury. But when the wealthy men began to offer larger
rents, and drive the poorer people out, it was enacted by law that
no person whatever should enjoy more than five hundred acres of ground.
This act for some time checked the avarice of the richer, and was
of great assistance to the poorer people, who retained under it their
respective proportions of ground, as they had been formerly rented
by them. Afterwards the rich men of the neighbourhood contrived to
get these lands again into their possession, under other people's
names, and at last would not stick to claim most of them publicly
in their own. The poor, who were thus deprived of their farms, were
no longer either ready, as they had formerly been, to serve in war
or careful in the education of their children; insomuch that in a
short time there were comparatively few freemen remaining in all Italy,
which swarmed with workhouses full of foreign-born slaves. These the
rich men employed in cultivating their ground of which they dispossessed
the citizens. Caius Laelius, the intimate friend of Scipio, undertook
to reform this abuse; but meeting with opposition from men of authority,
and fearing a disturbance, he soon desisted, and received the name
of the Wise or the Prudent, both which meanings belong to the Latin
word Sapiens.
But Tiberius, being elected tribune of the people, entered upon that
design without delay, at the instigation, as is most commonly stated,
of Diophanes, the rhetorician, and Blossius, the philosopher. Diophanes
was a refugee from Mitylene, the other was an Italian, of the city
of Cuma, and was educated there under Antipater of Tarsus, who afterwards
did him the honour to dedicate some of his philosophical lectures
to him.
Some have also charged Cornelia, the mother of Tiberius, with contributing
towards it, because she frequently upbraided her sons, that the Romans
as yet rather called her the daughter of Scipio, than the mother of
the Gracchi. Others again say that Spurius Postumius was the chief
occasion. He was a man of the same age with Tiberius, and his rival
for reputation as a public speaker; and when Tiberius, at his return
from the campaign, found him to have got far beyond him in fame and
influence, and to be much looked up to, he thought to outdo him, by
attempting a popular enterprise of this difficulty and of such great
consequence. But his brother Caius has left it us in writing, that
when Tiberius went through Tuscany to Numantia, and found the country
almost depopulated, there being hardly any free husbandmen or shepherds,
but for the most part only barbarian, imported slaves, he then first
conceived the course of policy which in the sequel proved so fatal
to his family. Though it is also most certain that the people themselves
chiefly excited his zeal and determination in the prosecution of it,
by setting up writings upon the porches, walls, and monuments, calling
upon him to reinstate the poor citizens in their former possessions.
However, he did not draw up his law without the advice and assistance
of those citizens that were then most eminent for their virtue and
authority; amongst whom were Crassus, the high-priest, Mucius Scaevola,
the lawyer, who at that time was consul, and Claudius Appius, his
father-in-law. Never did any law appear more moderate and gentle,
especially being enacted against such great oppression and avarice.
For they who ought to have been severely punished for trangressing
the former laws, and should at least have lost all their titles to
such lands which they had unjustly usurped, were notwithstanding to
receive a price for quitting their unlawful claims, and giving up
their lands to those fit owners who stood in need of help. But though
this reformation was managed with so much tenderness that, all the
former transactions being passed over, the people were only thankful
to prevent abuses of the like nature for the future, yet, on the other