Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.4, 1865).djvu/533

TIBERIUS GRACCHUS. 525 them something to eat. The soothsayer used his utmost endeavors to fright the fowls out of their coop ; but none of them except one would venture out, which fluttered with its left wing, and stretched out its leg, and ran back again into the coop, without eating any thing. This put Tiberius in mind of another ill omen which had formerly happened to him. He had a very costly headpiece, which he made use of when he engaged in any battle, and into this piece of armor two serpents crawled, laid eggs, and brought forth young ones. The remembrance of which made Tiberius more concerned now, than other- wise he would have been. However, he went towards the capitol, as soon as he understood that the people were assembled there ; but before he got out of the house, he stumbled upon the threshold with such violence, that he broke the nail of his great toe, insomuch that blood gushed out of his shoe. He was not gone very far be- fore he saw two ravens fighting on the top of a house which stood on his left hand as he passed along ; and though he was surrounded with a number of people, a stone, struck from its place by one of the ravens, fell just at his foot. This even the boldest men about him felt as a check. But Blossius of Cuma, who was present, told him, that it would be a shame, and an ignominious tiling, for Tiberius, who was the son of Gracchus, the grandson of Scipio Africanus, and the protector of the Roman peo- ple, to refuse, for fear of a silly bird, to answer, when his countrymen called to him; and that his adversaries would represent it not as a mere matter for their ridicule, but would declaim about it to the people as the mark of a tyrannical temper, which felt a pride in taking liberties with the people. At the same time several messengers came also from his friends, to desire his presence at the capitol, saying that all things went there according to ex- pectation. And indeed Tiberius's first entrance there was