When Gracchus was striving to remain tribune of the plebs himself in the following year, and on the day of the elections was kindling seditions among the people, the nobility, inflamed at the instigation of Nasica, put the plebs to flight with fragments of the benches.
1 Gracchus cum eniteretur, ut ipse tribunus plebi subsequenti anno permaneret, cumque comitiorum die seditiones populi accenderet, auctore Nasica inflammata nobilitas fragmentis subselliorum plebem fugauit.
Gracchus, fleeing down the steps that lie above the Calpurnian arch, having thrown off his cloak, was struck by a fragment of a bench and fell; and as he rose again he was struck dead by another blow, from a club dashed against his brain.
2 Gracchus per gradus, qui sunt super Calpurnium fornicem, detracto amiculo fugiens ictus fragmento subsellii conruit rursusque adsurgens alio ictu clauae cerebro inpactae exanimatus est.
Two hundred others besides were killed in that sedition and their bodies thrown into the Tiber; the corpse of Gracchus himself also rotted unburied.
3 ducenti praeterea in ea seditione interfecti eorumque corpora in Tiberim proiecta sunt; ipsius quoque Gracchi inhumatum cadauer extabuit.
Moreover, the contagion of the servile war that had arisen in Sicily infected many provinces far and wide. For at Minturnae 450 slaves were crucified, and at Sinuessa as many as 4,000 slaves were crushed by Quintus Metellus and Gnaeus Servilius Caepio;
4 orta praeterea in Sicilia belli seruilis contagio multas late infecit prouincias. nam et Minturnis CCCCL serui in crucem acti et Sinuessae ad quattuor milia seruorum a Q. Metello et Cn. Seruilio Caepione oppressa sunt;
in the mines of the Athenians, too, the same servile tumult was broken up by the praetor Heraclitus; at Delos as well the slaves, swelling up in a new outbreak, were suppressed by the townspeople, who forestalled them — all this apart from that first kindling of the Sicilian evil, from which, like sparks flying out, these were sown as so many separate conflagrations.
5 in metallis quoque Atheniensium idem tumultus seruilis ab Heraclito praetore discussus est; apud Delon etiam serui nouo motu intumescentes oppidanis praeuenientibus pressi sunt, absque illo primo Siciliensis mali fomite, a quo istae uelut scintillae emicantes, diuersa haec incendia seminarunt.
For in Sicily, after the consul Fulvius, the consul Piso stormed the town of Mamertium, where he killed eight thousand fugitives, and those he was able to capture he fastened to the gibbet.
6 in Sicilia enim post Fuluium consulem Piso consul Mamertium oppidum expugnauit, ubi octo milia fugitiuorum interfecit, quos autem capere potuit, patibulo suffixit.
When the consul Rutilius had succeeded him, he too recovered by war Tauromenium and Henna, the strongest refuges of the fugitives: more than twenty thousand slaves are reported to have been slaughtered then.
7 cui cum Rutilius consul successisset, idem quoque Tauromenium et Hennam, firmissima fugitiuorum refugia, bello recepit: amplius quam XX milia tunc seruorum trucidata referuntur.
Wretched indeed, and inextricable, was the cause of such a war. The masters would certainly have perished had the insolent slaves not been met with the sword. And yet, even in these most unhappy losses of battle and still more unhappy gains of victory, as many as perished among the vanquished, so many did the victors lose.
8 Misera profecto talis belli et inextricabilis causa. pereundum utique dominis erat, nisi insolescentibus seruis ferro obuiam iretur. sed tamen in ipsis quoque infelicissimis damnis pugnae et infelicioribus lucris uictoriae quanti periere uicti tantum perdidere uictores.