Tiberius and Caius Gracchus (Caius.9.2-Caius.10.2)

For when Caius proposed to found two colonies, and these composed of the most respectable citizens, they accused him of truckling to the people; but when Livius proposed to found twelve, and to send out to each of them three thousand of the needy citizens, they supported him. With Caius, because he distributed public land among the poor for which every man of them was required to pay a rental into the public treasury, they were angry, alleging that he was seeking thereby to win favour with the multitude; but Livius met with their approval when he proposed to relieve the tenants even from this rental.

And further, when Cams proposed to bestow upon the Latins equal rights of suffrage, he gave offence; but when Livius brought in a bill forbidding that any Latin should be chastised with rods even during military service, he had the senate’s support. And indeed Livius himself, in his public harangues, always said that he introduced these measures on the authority of the senate, which desired to help the common people;

and this in fact was the only advantage which resulted from his political measures. For the people became more amicably disposed towards the senate; and whereas before this they had suspected and hated the nobles, Livius softened and dissipated their remembrance of past grievances and their bitter feelings by alleging that it was the sanction of the nobles which had induced him to enter upon his course of conciliating the people and gratifying the wishes of the many.

But the strongest proof that Livius was well disposed towards the people and honest, lay in the fact that he never appeared to propose anything for himself or in his own interests. For he moved to send out other men as managers of his colonies, and would have no hand in the expenditure of moneys, whereas Caius had assigned to himself most of such functions and the most important of them.

And now Rubrius, one of his colleagues in the tribuneship, brought in a bill for the founding of a colony on the site of Carthage, which had been destroyed by Scipio, and Caius, upon whom the lot fell, sailed off to Africa as superintendent of the foundation. In his absence, therefore, Livius made all the more headway against him, stealing into the good graces of the people and attaching them to himself, particularly by his calumniations of Fulvius.