Book 38
56
Gracchus himself complains that in this instance the authority of the tribunes was successfully defied by a private citizen, and at the end of his speech where he promises to support Scipio, he adds that it would form a better precedent were it to appear that the tribunitian and State authority had been overborne by a tribune of the plebs rather than by a private citizen. But while he reproaches him bitterly for losing his self-control in this one outbreak of lawlessness, and censures him for having fallen so far below himself, he makes up for his censures in recalling the high esteem in which Scipio was held in the old days for his equable and self-disciplined character. He reminded his hearers how severely Scipio rebuked the people for wishing to make him perpetual consul and dictator; how he had prevented them from raising statues to him in the Comitium, the Rostra, the senate house, and in the shrine of Jupiter on the Capitol, and how he had prevented a decree from being passed authorising his image decked in triumphal garb to be borne in procession from the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. These things, even if inserted in a public eulogium, would still be a proof of his greatness of soul in keeping his honours within the limits of ordinary civic life; how much more so when they are the admissions of an enemy.
