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Jogular Morotario Sectory 03
Page 08
Tiberius served under his brother-in-law in Africa, and was the first who scaled the walls of Carthage. He was Quaestor in B.C. 137, and accompanied the Consul C. Hostilius to Spain, where he saved the army by obtaining a treaty with the Numantines, which the Senate refused to ratify.[61] In passing through Etruria, on his way to Spain, Tiberius had observed with grief and indignation the deserted state of that fertile country. Thousands of foreign slaves were tending the flocks and cultivating the soil of the wealthy landowners, while Roman citizens, thus thrown out of employment, could scarcely procure their daily bread, and had not a clod of earth to call their own. He now conceived the design of applying a remedy to this state of things, and with this view became a candidate for the Tribunate, and was elected for the year B.C. 133.
Shortly afterward Tullus Hostilius made war against the Etruscans of Fidenae and Veii. The Albans, under their dictator Mettius Fuffetius, followed him to the war as the subjects of Rome. In the battle against the Etruscans, the Alban dictator, faithless and insolent, withdrew to the hills, but when the Etruscans were defeated he descended to the plain, and congratulated the Roman king. Tullus pretended to be deceived. On the following day he summoned the two armies to receive their praises and rewards. The Albans came without arms, and were surrounded by the Roman troops. They then heard their sentence. Their dictator was to be torn in pieces by horses driven opposite ways; their city was to be razed to the ground; and they themselves, with their wives and children, transported to Rome. Tullus assigned to them the Caelian Hill for their habitation. Some of the noble families of Alba were enrolled among the Roman patricians, but the great mass of the Alban people were not admitted to the privileges of the ruling class. They were the origin of the Roman _Plebs_, who were thus quite distinct from the Patricians and their Clients. The Patricians still formed exclusively the Populus, or Roman people, properly so called. The Plebs were a subject-class without any share in the government.
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