History of Rome

​In reviewing the knights, their censorship was extremely severe and harsh:

​they deprived many of their horses. Having offended the equestrian order in this matter, they added fuel to the flame of resentment by an edict, in which they declared that no one of those who, in the censorship of Quintus Fulvius and Aulus Postumius, had farmed the public revenues or contracted for public works, should come to their auction, or be a partner or associate in such a contract.

​Since the old tax-farmers, by frequently complaining of this, had been unable to obtain from the senate that they should place a limit upon the censorial power, they finally found a champion for their cause in Publius Rutilius, a tribune of the plebs, who was angry with the censors on account of a private dispute.

​They had ordered a client of his, a freedman, to demolish a wall on the Sacred Way opposite the public buildings, because it had been built on public land.

​The tribunes were appealed to by the private citizen. Since no one but Rutilius interceded, the censors sent to seize pledges and imposed a fine on the private citizen before the assembly.

​A dispute having arisen from this, when the old tax-farmers betook themselves to the tribune, a bill was suddenly promulgated under the name of that single tribune, proposing that the leases which Gaius Claudius and Tiberius Sempronius had made of the public revenues and public works should not be valid;

​that they should be leased anew, and that all men should have the right of bidding and contracting indiscriminately.

​The tribune of the plebs fixed a day for the assembly to vote on the bill. When it arrived, and the censors came forward to speak against it, there was silence while Gracchus was speaking; but when Claudius was interrupted by noise, he ordered the herald to demand a hearing.

​Complaining that by this act the assembly had been taken away from him and that he had been degraded, the tribune left the Capitoline, where the assembly was being held.

​On the following day he stirred up a huge tumult. First, he consecrated the property of Tiberius Gracchus, because, in the matter of the fine and pledges of the man who had appealed to the tribune, by not obeying the veto, he had degraded him;

​he appointed a day of trial for Gaius Claudius, because he had taken the assembly away from him; and he declared that he would prosecute both censors for high treason, and requested a day for the comitia from Gaius Sulpicius, the city praetor.

​Since the censors did not object to the people holding a trial concerning them at the earliest possible time, the days for the treason trial before the assembly were fixed for the eighth and seventh days before the Kalends of October.

​Immediately the censors went up to the Hall of Liberty, and there, having sealed the public records, closed the registry, and dismissed the public slaves, they declared that they would perform no public business until the judgment of the people concerning them had been rendered.

​Claudius pleaded his cause first; and when, out of the twelve centuries of knights, eight had condemned the censor, as well as many others of the first class, immediately the leading men of the state, laying aside their golden rings in the sight of the people, changed their dress, so that as suppliants they might go about among the plebeians.

​Yet Tiberius Gracchus is said to have turned opinion the most; for when there was a cry from the plebeians on all sides that Gracchus was in no danger, he swore in set terms that if his colleague should be condemned, he would not wait for the trial concerning himself, but would accompany him into exile.

​However, the accused came so near to the end of his hopes that only eight centuries were wanting for his condemnation. When Claudius was acquitted, the tribune of the plebs declared that he would not detain Gracchus.