orchards and farm buildings and go to empty land or move from cultivated to uncultivated land or swamps. As anyone was allowed to work undistributed land, many tilled land next to their own, blurring the demarcation between public and private land. Rome's Italian allies complained about lawsuits brought against them and chose Scipio Aemilianus to defend them. As the allies had fought in his wars, he accepted. In the senate Scipio did not criticise the Law, but argued that the cases should be heard by a court rather than the commission which did not have the confidence of the litigants. This was accepted and the consul Gaius Sempronius Tuditanus was appointed to give judgment. However, seeing that the job was difficult he found a pretext to fight a war in Illyria. The people were angry at Scipio "because they saw a man, in whose favour they had often opposed the aristocracy and incurred their enmity, electing him consul twice contrary to law, now taking the side of the Italian allies against themselves" His enemies claimed that he was determined to abolish the Gracchian law and was about to start "armed strife and bloodshed". When the people heard these allegations they were in a state of alarm until Scipio died at home in his bed; according to Appian, without a wound. Death and possible assassination Appian wrote that it could not be known whether Scipio was murdered by Cornelia (the mother of the Gracchi brothers) and her daughter Sempronia (who was married to Scipio), who were worried that the Gracchian law might be repealed, or whether he committed suicide because he saw that he could not deliver on his promises. He added that "[s]ome say that slaves under torture testified that unknown persons were introduced through the rear of the house by night who suffocated him, and that those who knew about it hesitated to tell because the people were angry with him still and rejoiced at his death." Plutarch wrote that "although Scipio Africanus died at home after dinner, there is no convincing proof of the manner of his end, but some say that he died naturally, being of a sickly habit, some that he died of poison administered by his own hand, and some that his enemies broke into his house at night and smothered him. And yet Scipio's dead body lay exposed for all to see, and all