The agrarian law had only passed by the assistance of the votes of the country tribes.[652] Nevertheless, the popular party, in its enthusiasm, carried Tiberius home in triumph, calling him not only the benefactor of one city, but the father of all the peoples of Italy.
The possessors of the great domains, struck in their dearest interests, were far from sharing in this joy. Not satisfied with having attempted to carry off the urns at the time the law was voted, they plotted the assassination of Tiberius.[653] In fact, as Machiavelli says: “Men value riches even more than honours, and the obstinacy of the Roman aristocracy in defending its possessions constrained the people to have recourse to extremities.”[654]
The chiefs of the opposition, great landholders, such as the tribune Octavius and Scipio Nasica, attacked in every possible way the author of the law which despoiled them, and one day the senator Pompeius went so far as to say that the King of Pergamus had sent Tiberius a robe of purple and the diadem, signs of the tribune’s future royalty.[655] The latter, in self-defence, had recourse to proposals inspired rather by the desire of a vain popularity than the general interest. The struggle became daily more and more embittered, and his friends persuaded him to secure his re-election as tribune, in order that the inviolability of his office might afford a refuge against the attacks of his enemies. The people was convoked; but the most substantial support of Tiberius failed him: the country people, retained by the harvest, did not obey the call.[656]
Tiberius only sought a reform, and, unknowingly, he had commenced a revolution. But to accomplish this he did not possess all the necessary qualities. A singular mixture of gentleness and audacity, he unchained the tempest, but dared not launch the thunderbolt. Surrounded by his adherents, he walked to the comitia with more appearance of resignation than assurance. The tribes, assembled in the Capitol, were beginning to give their votes, when the senator Fulvius Flaccus came to warn Tiberius that, in the meeting of the Senate, the rich, surrounded by their slaves, had resolved on his destruction. This information produced a considerable agitation round the tribune, and those at a distance demanding the cause of the tumult, Tiberius raised his hand to his head to explain by signs the danger which threatened him.[657] Then his enemies hurried to the Senate, and, giving their own interpretation to his gesture, denounced him as aiming at the kingly power. The Senate, preceded by the sovereign pontiff, Scipio Nasica, repaired to the Capitol. The mob of Tiberius was dispersed, and he himself was slain, with three hundred of his friends, near the gate of the sacred inclosure. All his partisans were hunted out, and underwent the same fate, and among others Diophanes the rhetorician.