Midmorning runners came up the hill from Fulvius’ and Gaius’ homes. The Senate had sent two squadrons of lictors to demand their presence before Opimius. Though Gaius was willing to go, Fulvius, feeling badly from drink, argued as he had the night before. Their only hope was to bargain from a fortified position; otherwise they were strictly at the mercy of a man who had already made his position clear. He had called them enemies of Rome and had been granted permission to do whatever was necessary to protect the state.
After a long discussion, Gaius simply gave in to the warlike Fulvius. They decided to send Fulvius’ youngest son, Quintus, a handsome boy of twelve years, to deliver a message written on papyrus to the Senate: If Opimius wants to talk to us about the events of two days ago, he must come to the temple of Diana.
The entire forum was filled with people waiting for Fulvius and Gaius to answer the Senate’s call. Quintus, hefting a herald’s staff to signify the importance of his chore, pushed through the anxious crowd and gained the Curia porch where Opimius received him and read the message. The consul immediately rejected the offer. “Taking a position on the Aventine Hill is proof enough of their guilt for me,” he shouted to the three hundred senators fanned out on the Curia stairs and the onlookers beyond. He scratched his answer on the back of the papyrus—Lay down your arms and come directly to the Senate or face the consequences. He gave the note to the boy, saying not to return unless he came with both Fulvius and Gaius.
When Quintus arrived with Opimius’ demand, Gaius again expressed his willingness to go to the Senate and make a plea, but by this time, his comrades, inspired by the bilious Fulvius, would not allow it. They were confident they could hold their position and believed that anything less than a direct confrontation would be dishonorable. Gaius, a man noted for decisive and dynamic action, seemed torn between being loyal to his clients and turning himself in. Fulvius became impatient and dispatched Quintus to the Curia a second time. The message was the same; they would not leave the temple.
When the boy arrived at the Senate, Opimius had him taken away and held. Then he turned to the collection of senators. “Have we not seen enough? These men are the enemies of Rome. It is my duty to protect the state. You denied me yesterday, but you can’t today! Gather your arms. We’re off to the Aventine Hill to rout these men out!”
Opimius had anticipated resistance. The night before he had contacted Caecilius Metellus, an ultra-aristocrat who had just returned from a successful campaign in the Balearic Islands. Metellus and his troops were waiting outside Rome for this current issue to be resolved before entering the city as part of a triumph. A cohort of Cretan archers was among Metellus troops. Opimius told Metellus to send these five hundred archers into the city at daybreak and have them wait in the cattle market for further orders.
With only a handful of senators refusing to take part, Opimius led some two hundred and ninety members of the Senate, each accompanied by two or three of their personal slaves, to the cattle market to join forces with the Cretan archers. The entire group, close to fifteen hundred strong, ascended to the top of the Aventine Hill and encircled the temple of Diana. Opimius had no intention of entering into a discussion with the men he considered traitors. He shouted orders to his comrades, then rushed the temple. The hastily built ramparts provided just enough resistance, and Opimius’ men were summarily repulsed.
Instead of making another foray, Opimius deployed the Cretan archers into six positions around the temple then ordered them to launch their darts. Except for the steady rain of arrows piercing through the gaps in their fortress, the Gracchans could have held out all day against Opimius’ forces. But one after another the men were struck by arrows. When the number of dead equaled the number living, Opimius signaled for another attack. His forces quickly surmounted the makeshift barriers, and the rout was on. Those still alive inside the temple made a break for it, simply trying to save themselves.
Fulvius and his other son, also named Marcus, raced down the east side of the hill scrambling through the homes and tenements with thirty men chasing them. Fulvius wound through the streets to the woodworking shop of a friend. The man ushered Fulvius and Marcus into a hiding place at the rear of the shop. Shortly afterward, the neighborhood filled with men searching for Fulvius. Every shop owner and tenant was questioned. When an old man told them that the woodworker was a friend of Fulvius’, twelve of Opimius’ militia burst into the shop and ransacked the place looking for the ex-consul. When they could not find him, they pressured the owner. Certain that his life was in danger, the woodworker said aloud that Fulvius was not there, but under his breath revealed where he was hiding
The twelve men positioned themselves around the hiding place, then called to Fulvius to come out. Rather than surrender, Fulvius leapt from his hiding place and tried to take the men on with only a gladius to defend himself. He was known as a dangerous man in battle, and he hoped to hold them off long enough for his son to escape. But against twelve men he had no chance. Four of them lunged at him at once. Two pierced his torso. When Marcus tried to come to Fulvius’ aid, he was immediately struck down, leaving him in a pool of blood to watch his father brutally butchered.
Gaius, who had struck no blow in the foray, saw that everything was falling apart. He went into the temple cella instead of fleeing. He knelt on the stone floor beside the statue of Diana and issued a curse against those he had spent his life defending, “May the people of Rome never be freed from the shackles they refused to let me remove,” then withdrew the dagger from within his tunic. He held it out to Philocrates. “Please, my friend, end this sad life for me.”
Before Philocrates could take the dagger, Pomponius rushed into the cella. “No, Gaius! There’s still a chance to get away.”
Laetorius appeared behind Pomponius. “All of you, quick, come with me.”
Pomponius grabbed Gaius by the wrist and pulled him to his feet. With Laetorius and Pomponius running interference, Gaius and Philocrates slipped through the ring of aggressors and followed their friends into an alley that led down the west side of the hill toward the Tiber River. One of Opimius’ militia officers, Septimuleius, saw them enter the alley and called out for help.
On the way down the hill, now with ten men on his tail, Gaius tripped and twisted his ankle. Philocrates helped him to his feet and did his best to keep Gaius moving. Pomponius urged them go ahead. He would slow down Septimuleius and give Gaius a chance to get away.
As Philocrates, Laetorius, and Gaius passed through Trigeminia Gate, headed to the Sublician Bridge, they heard Pomponius shriek. Gaius stopped to look back, but Laetorius yanked him ahead, saying that he would man the bridge while Gaius and Philocrates made for the forest on the other side of the river.
Gaius limped ahead with Philocrates, neither of them sure where they were going or how they would get away. Gaius’ life had fallen to pieces. He was running for his life but empty of all will to live. Laetorius blocked Septimuleius and now just six other men at the bridge. He killed two of them before he was trampled over, pierced with wounds. Philocrates beseeched passersby for help or the use of a horse, but it was too late to escape. They could already hear Septimuleius’ voice.
Gaius directed Philocrates to the Furrina Grove on the west bank of the Tiber. The grove was a small grassy opening in the woods with a sculpture of the goddess Furrina and an altar. For a second time Gaius offered Philocrates his dagger. “My hesitation earlier cost the lives of my two best friends. Please, do it now, Philocrates, so that you might get away.”
“No, I will take my life as well, master,” he said accepting the dagger. “Your loss is also mine.”
Gaius knelt before Philocrates and tore open his tunic to bare his chest. Before Philocrates could stab him, Septimuleius and four other men raced into the grove. Instead of killing Gaius, Philocrates fell on his master to protect him, but it was no use. Septimuleius and his comrades stabbed and hacked at both men until it was difficult to tell, except for their two heads, that t
hey were separate corpses.
Prior to the attack on the temple of Diana, Opimius had placed a bounty on both Gaius and Fulvius, promising whoever killed either man a payment in gold equal to the weight of the man’s head. Fulvius’ killers came to Opimius with the ex-consul’s head. Such was its condition, Opimius, a man of few scruples, refused to pay them, claiming he could not recognize the trophy as Fulvius.
Across Rome, Septimuleius dispatched his men, then took Gaius’ head. He went to his home to remove the brain and fill the cavity with lead. He came to Opimius with the head mounted on a javelin. When the head was placed on the scales, Opimius became suspicious of its weight and quickly discovered what the man had done. He threatened to exile Septimuleius for trying to cheat a Roman magistrate, then had the head tossed into the Tiber with all the other corpses. Somehow, impossibly it seemed, Gaius’ death was even more ugly than Tiberius’. Such was the horrible fate of my two brothers.
CHAPTER 102
Following the dispersal of the rebels, as they were being called, and Gaius’ death, thieves and thugs went to both Fulvius’ and Gaius’ homes seeking plunder. Licinia learned of Gaius’ death from the threats and insults shouted by these opportunists as they crashed through her front door and thundered in the back of the house through the peristyle.
Licinia managed to get out of the house before becoming part of the plunder. She ran through the streets in tears with Catalda and the two children trying to keep up. Cornelia and I were in the atrium anxiously awaiting news of any kind when Licinia burst through the door.
“Gaius is dead,” she screamed, then threw herself on the entry floor, wailing and pulling at her hair. Cornelia rushed to her side. I trailed behind in my wheelchair as the horror descended upon us all like a family-specific disease.
There is little reason to detail the unspeakable agony we felt that afternoon. The children, the slaves, each of us women, simply gave into the tragedy of Gaius’ death and cried, alternately embracing each other and ranting at the gods. Could a home fill with tears, mine would have. Although Opimius declared it illegal to mourn “the insurgents,” no law could deny the grief that filled our lives in the following weeks, months, and, really, the remaining years of our lives.
In the month that followed the debacle at the top of the Aventine Hill, a place known since the first days of the Republic as a plebeian refuge, Opimius did all he could to rub salt into the wounds of our family and the families and friends of those who had died in defense of Gaius and Fulvius. In all, some one thousand corpses were carried from the temple of Diana and thrown into the Tiber. Another two thousand citizens were rounded up and executed without a trial. Everyday for weeks on end it seemed we heard of more men taken to the Tullianum, Rome’s state prison, to be strangled. Quintus, Fulvius’ young son, though only serving as a messenger for his father, was also executed. Opimius allowed him the great privilege of deciding how he would die. Additionally, all of Licinia’s possessions, even her dowry, something always returned to a widow, were confiscated. When Cornelia left Rome, Licinia, her children, and the family’s slaves traveled with her to Misenum.
As a final insult to my brothers, my family, and all those Gaius and Tiberius had given their lives to help, Opimius built a temple to Concord at the west end of the forum as a memorial to his eradication of the Gracchan movement, which he had denounced as a rebellion. Two weeks after the temple was completed, an unknown citizen defiled the temple by etching into the stone below the temple’s inscription, To Folly and Discord Concord’s temple built.
EPILOGUE
“Thus the sedition of the younger Gracchus came to an end. Not long afterward a law was enacted to permit the holders to sell the land acquired through redistribution; for even this had been forbidden by the law of the elder Gracchus. At once the rich began to buy the allotments of the poor, or found pretexts for seizing them by force. So the condition of the poor became even worse than it was before. By these devices, the law of Gracchus—a most excellent and useful one, if it could have been carried out—was once and for all frustrated. So the plebeians lost everything, and hence resulted a still further decline in the numbers both of citizens and soldiers.”
-Appian of Alexandria, Civil Wars
The deaths of my brothers marked the beginning of a steady crumbling of the Roman Republic. In the eight years since Gaius’ death, I have already seen the little cracks become big ones, along with the steady repeal of many of my brothers’ efforts at populist reform.
Two years after Opimius’ rash response to Gaius’ political efforts, the then ex-consul was tried for his deeds. As an example of how things and people change, Papirius Carbo defended Opimius in court. He admitted that Opimius was responsible for Gaius’ and Fulvius’ deaths, but he used the Senate’s order “to see that the state took no harm” as a defense for Opimius’ actions. The Senate responded by denying all charges against Opimius. This awful and yet sensational trial catapulted Carbo to a consulship the following year.
Polybius died eighteen months after the trial at the age of eighty-two. Although I saw him three times subsequent to learning of Philocrates’ part in Aemilianus’ murder, I never told him what I knew and he never asked. I will always consider him a great and thoughtful man.
Two years after Polybius’ death, Cornelia’s longtime friend and suitor Physcon died in Egypt. He was sixty-six years of age. She was seventy-four. As it turned out, the last time they saw each other was the day Physcon requested a final parting kiss from Cornelia. It was the first thing she said upon hearing of his death.
My friend Laelia never remarried after her divorce. Although I would leave Rome and lose contact with her, she continued to study law and did finally argue several legal cases in the forum.
Cornelia spent the rest of her life in Misenum with Licinia, her children, and later me. She focused on the education of her grandsons and writing. She also continued and expanded her intellectual circle.
I showed this history to Cornelia shortly after completing it. She was not as surprised as I expected. “I knew you would be writer, Sempronia,” she said when she returned the manuscript to me with a few pages of comments and additions. “Literature was your sanctuary after all.” She embraced me, and I her, knowing she was right.
“I believe you elaborated on a difficult subject with remarkable grace,” she said upon releasing me, “but I have one critical remark. A large part of this book is a portrait of me as a mother and an influential voice in Rome.”
I nodded that this was accurate.
“But what comes across more strongly is your strength, not mine,” she said. “I believe you did more to support your brothers than I did. Not only did you help them with their political struggles and give support to their wives, but you also took on Aemilianus and became an important political player in your own right.”
“You mean as an assassin. No, Mother, that was not politics—that was self-defense.”
“No, that was strength. If there’s truly a woman of note in Rome, I believe that woman is you.”
I do not agree with my mother’s assessment. She was the one who made all of us who we were and was always there doing what a good mother must—support, defend, and, if necessary, criticize her children. I hope this is not lost in my history no matter how my brothers, or even I, are portrayed in the material. The influence of my mother is behind every bill my brothers proposed and every word I write.
Today, as I add this epilogue to my manuscript, Cornelia is one year short of eighty. She still remains a grand lady, who when asked about her sons refers to them as her jewels and recounts their deeds without a tear or a quiver in her voice, as though she were reciting from my history. Some have wondered about this. How could she possibly manage to talk about those twin tragedies with so little emotion? A few have said that old age has taken her mind and that she no longer has feelings to express. I have lived with Cornelia the past five years. I can attest that she has not lost any of her intellectual facilit
y and that she still harbors deep and painful wounds from those difficult times. For the most part, I believe it is her elevated sense of dignity and her nobility that allow her to speak to others about those tragic events with such seeming distance.
When she and I talk about my brothers, however, the conversation becomes emotional and invariably leads to variations of the same question: Had it all come about because of her? Had her populist views infected Tiberius and Gaius with such a strong sense of duty that it became like an illness and drove them to an inevitable collision with the strongest forces in Rome? Cornelia would say yes. I always argued against that conclusion. Yes, she had educated her sons to the highest ideal. And yes, they had lived it. But as Gaius heard Tiberius tell him in a dream, “One life and one death is appointed to each of us, to spend the one and to meet the other in the service of the people.” That was my brothers’ destiny as surely as Tiberius Gracchus was their father.
In closing, it is worth noting that among the plebeians both Tiberius and Gaius will always be remembered as heroes. The locations of their deaths have become sacred places, and just last year a bill was approved by the People’s Assembly to build a memorial to them. I hope it is completed soon so that I can take Cornelia to Rome to witness its dedication. Maybe one day they will build a memorial to her.
LIST OF CHARACTERS
Ada- Claudia Gracchus’ Iberian housemaid
Aemilia Tertia Paulla- Cornelia Scipionis’ mother
Aemilius Paullus- Roman consul, brother of Aemilia Paulla
Antullius- herald, client of the consul Opimius
Cornelia- the First Woman of Rome Page 35