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GRACCHUS An Opera of Civic Redemption

Rome, 121 B.C.
ACT I
Scene 1: The Plebeian Mob, consisting mostly of dispossessed farmers, landless veterans, and the urban poor, broods over its down-and-out condition in the Roman Forum, portending civil unrest. Loquax, an optimist, comments on the Mob’s cri de coeur, gradually recognizing the gravity of the situation. Fatuus enters and provides entertainment. The aristocratic Publius and his retinue are passing through but stop to take in Fatuus’s performance. Fatuus engages in a provocative exchange with Publius, in which he praises Gaius Gracchus, while exciting the Mob. As a consequence, Fatuus is killed by Publius’s henchman, Metellus Gladius.
Scene 2: Fatuus’s cortege, led by Loquax and the Mob, passes by the house of the Gracchi. Gaius is in the room of the family shrine, head down on a table after a bout of drinking. The Tribune is visited by the ghost of his brother, Tiberius, who exhorts him to carry on the work of political and agrarian reform. The Ghost departs and …