The Encyclopædia Britannica suggests that Scipio Aemilianus was not in sympathy with the optimates, the political faction which supported the aristocracy. Whatever the case, he was in disagreement with the militant actions of the movement led by Gracchus when he was a plebeian tribune, which pressed for a law to redistribute land to the poor. Plutarch wrote that "this disagreement certainly resulted in no mischief past remedy" and thought that if Scipio had been in Rome during the political activity of Gracchus, the latter would not have been murdered - he was fighting the war in Hispania. Still, he disliked the actions of Gracchus. Plutarch wrote "at Numantia, when he learned of the death of Tiberius, he recited in a loud voice the verse of Homer: [from the Odyssey I.47 ""So may all who engage in such lawless conspiracies perish."" Plutarch also wrote that (after his return to Rome) "when Gaius and Fulvius asked him in an assembly of the people what he thought about the death of Tiberius, he made a reply which showed his dislike of the measures advocated by him," this made him unpopular, "the people began to interrupt him as he was speaking, a thing which they had never done before, and Scipio himself was thereby led on to abuse the people." Gaius Papirius Carbo was a plebeian tribune and Marcus Fulvius Flaccus was a senator sympathetic to the Gracchian cause.