This struggle became still more fierce when Caius Gracchus, ten years
after the death of his brother, claimed and obtained the tribuneship,
and then took up that brother’s work. The agitation for the agrarian law
was renewed, an enactment was made for a monthly distribution of corn to
the city poor, and various other reforms were proposed by him. After
holding the tribuneship for two years, however, he lost the office
through the intrigues of his opponents. The nobles were determined to
crush Gracchus; accordingly, at one of the public assemblies they
attacked the partisans of the popular leader, and there ensued a bloody
combat (121 B. C.) in which three thousand of his adherents were slain.
Gracchus himself fled into a wood across the Tiber; but, being pursued,
he chose to die by the hands of a faithful slave rather than fall into
the power of his enemies.