The Storm Before the Storm полностью

On the morning that the fate of the colony was slated for debate, two rival factions filtered into the Forum. While Gaius paced in an adjacent portico, Flaccus delivered an energetic speech attacking the tyranny of Opimius and the Senate. With the Gracchan faction riled up, one of Opimius’s servants started making his way through the crowd bearing the entrails for a sacrifice. Some reports state that the servant merely approached Gaius and begged him to not do anything that would destroy the Republic. Plutarch, however, says the servant pushed his way through the crowd, demanding that the Gracchan rascals make way and cursing their impetuousness. Both versions of the story end the same, though: a band of Gracchan supporters surrounded the servant. One of the Gracchans then pulled out a writing stylus that had been sharpened into a shiv and stabbed Opimius’s servant to death.⁴⁶

When word of the murder filtered through the crowd, the Forum erupted. In the ensuing commotion, Gaius berated his followers for giving the Senate the excuse they needed to crack down and then rushed forward to try to explain that the murder of Opimius’s servant was not what it appeared. But no one wanted to hear it. In the chaos no one could hear it. But a final confrontation was avoided when a heavy rain started to fall, and it drove both sides out of the Forum. As Gaius considered which way to run, he cried, “Whither shall I, unhappy wretch, betake myself? Whither shall I turn? To the Capitol? But that is drenched with the blood of my brother! Or to my home, that I may see my distressed and afflicted mother in all the agony of lamentation?”⁴⁷

The next day the consul convened the Senate to discuss a response to the events of the previous day. Just as debate was beginning a din broke out in the Forum. The funeral procession bearing Opimius’s murdered servant coincidentally arrived at the Forum as the Senate met. Emerging from the Senate to view the procession, the senators denounced the reckless political violence of the Gracchans and grieved for its victims. But pro-Gracchan citizens present in the Forum heckled the moralizing senators, asking why they were so worked up over a dead servant when ten years earlier they had dumped the bodies of Tiberius Gracchus and three hundred of his followers into the Tiber without a second thought.⁴⁸

Insulted by the crowd, the Senate gave Opimius the authority he needed to restore order. They instructed Opimius to do “whatever he thought necessary to preserve the State.” The intent of this vague decree was clearly to authorize Opimius to act as a dictator would—without resurrecting the cumbersome and archaic authority of the Dictatorship itself. Though they did not know it at the time, the Senate’s improvised decree set a precedent for the future. In times of civil unrest the Senate would invoke the same formula, which became known as the senatus consultum ultimum—the Senate’s Final Decree. Opimius promptly ordered every senator to provide two armed men from their households and muster them in the Forum the next morning.⁴⁹

GAIUS GRACCHUS SPENT his final night as his brother had—surrounded by bodyguards and partisans, knowing that a great confrontation loomed in the morning. Gaius had spent years telling people about his dream: “However much you may try to defer your fate,” the ghost of his brother told him, “you must die the same death that I did.” What had once been a stirring bit of propaganda now seemed morbidly specific. Flaccus seemed unconcerned—even eager—about the looming clash. He and his friends stayed up late drinking and boasting of the fight they would give the no-good bastards in the morning. Gaius was sober. And somber.⁵⁰

In the morning, Flaccus had to be roused from a hungover stupor, but when he woke he distributed weapons to the men from his own private collection. As they left the house Gaius had to disentangle himself from his wife, who begged him to stay: “Not to the rostra, O Gaius, do I now send you forth, as formerly, to serve as tribune and law-giver, nor yet to a glorious war, where, should you die… you would at all events leave me in honored sorrow.” Instead, he was exposing himself to men who likely aimed to murder him. “The worst has at last prevailed; by violence and the sword men’s controversies are now decided… Why, pray, should men longer put faith in laws or gods, after the murder of Tiberius?” But Gaius pushed his way past her—honor would not be satisfied by staying home.⁵¹

The Gracchan faction occupied the Aventine Hill, which lay across a shallow valley from the Palatine Hill and along a plebeian enclave going back to the founding of the city. Flaccus was clearly spoiling for a fight, but Gaius prevailed upon them all to give reason one last chance. They dispatched Flaccus’s young son Quintus to the Forum to find out what—if anything—would defuse the crisis.⁵²