Scipio was found dead. His body unmarked, with a notebook beside him which he had put to hand in the evening,

intending to write that night a speech he was to give to a gathering of the public.

There are some who say that slaves confessed under torture that strangers were brought into the back of the house at night who strangled him,

and that those who discovered this shrank from publicizing it because the people were still angry with Scipio.

And pleased at his death. Scipio, anyway, was dead.

Well, this is Young Heretics, and that was the ancient murder mystery of Scipio Africanus, the younger,

also known as Scipio Imelionus.

Appian, who is the major historian of this period, says that episode, notable in itself,

was no more than a subsidiary incident in what's called the Grecken disturbance, which is what we've been talking about now for two episodes on Young Heretics.

That's how wild this thing was, the like unsolvable murder mystery of a major public official and war hero.

It's just like kind of a thing that happened in passing during this insane time in Roman history.

Today's episode of Young Heretics is about how things got to that point.

So just to remind you for a second, last week we sort of left off in the middle of the Grecken disturbance.

It's called the Grecken disturbance of the Grecken period of Roman history because it's dominated by these two incredibly charismatic brothers,

Tiberius Grecus and Gaius Grecus.

Last week was all about Tiberius Grecus, who's sort of major contribution or major attempt to contribute to Roman political life,

was to restore a law that said nobody can have more than 500 eugera of conquered land.

The Romans were expanding, especially they were interested to know what to do with their land in Italy.

And they had this idea that you could have sort of small farms of 500 eugera ancient Roman measurements, right?

That's about half a square mile, as I said last week.

So this incensed the rich who had already been kind of sprawling out vastly into this territory,

taking up vast tracts of land.

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