and more was paid to Lucius Septumuleius, a man of quality, the bearer of the head of Gracchus, while the murderers of Flaccus, persons of humble rank, were sent away with empty hands.  The bodies of the dead were thrown into the river; the houses of the leaders were abandoned to the pillage of the multitude.  The warfare of prosecution against the partisans of Gracchus began on the grandest scale; as many as 3000 of them are said to have been strangled in prison, amongst whom was Quintus Flaccus, eighteen years of age, who had taken no part in the conflict and was universally lamented on account of his youth and his amiable disposition.  On the open space beneath the Capitol where the altar consecrated by Camillus after the restoration of internal peace(29) and other shrines erected on similar occasions to Concord were situated, these small chapels were pulled down; and out of the property of the killed or condemned traitors, which was confiscated even to the portions of their wives, a new and splendid temple of Concord with the basilica belonging to it was erected in accordance with a decree of the senate by the consul Lucius Opimius.  Certainly it was an act in accordance with the spirit of the age to remove the memorials of the old, and to inaugurate a new, concord over the remains of the three grandsons of the conqueror of Zama, all of whom—­first Tiberius Gracchus, then Scipio Aemilianus, and lastly the youngest and the mightiest, Gaius Gracchus—­had now been engulfed by the revolution.  The memory of the Gracchi remained officially proscribed; Cornelia was not allowed even to put on mourning for the death of her last son; but the passionate attachment, which very many had felt towards the two noble brothers and especially towards Gaius during their life, was touchingly displayed also after their death in the almost religious veneration which the multitude, in spite of all precautions of police, continued to pay to their memory and to the spots where they had fallen.

CHAPTER IV

The Rule of the Restoration

Vacancy in the Government

The new structure, which Gaius Gracchus had reared, became on his death a ruin.  His death indeed, like that of his brother, was primarily a mere act of vengeance; but it was at the same time a very material step towards the restoration of the old constitution, when the person of the monarch was taken away from the monarchy, just as it was on the point of being established.  It was all the more so in the present instance, because after the fall of Gaius and the sweeping and bloody prosecutions of Opimius there existed at the moment absolutely no one, who, either by blood-relationship to the fallen chief of the state or by preeminent ability, might feel himself warranted in even attempting to occupy the vacant place.  Gaius had departed from the world childless, and the son whom Tiberius had left behind him died before reaching manhood; the whole popular party, as it was called, was literally without any one who could be named as leader.  The Gracchan constitution resembled a fortress without a commander; the walls and garrison were uninjured, but the general was wanting, and there was no one to take possession of the vacant place save the very government which had been overthrown.