fairs, partly by taking business after the most
comprehensive fashion into his own hands. The measures of the
former kind have been mentioned already: the new master of the state
without consulting the senate dealt with the state-chest, by imposing
a permanent and oppressive burden on the public finances in the
distribution of corn; dealt with the domains, by sending out colonies
not as hitherto by decree of the senate and people, but by decree of
the people alone; and dealt with the provincial administration, by
overturning through a law of the people the financial constitution given
by the senate to the province of Asia and substituting for it one
altogether different. One of the most important of the current duties
of the senate--that of fixing at its pleasure the functions for the
time being of the two consuls--was not withdrawn from it; but the
indirect pressure hitherto exercised in this way over the supreme
magistrates was limited by directing the senate to fix these functions
before the consuls concerned were elected. With unrivalled
activity, lastly, Gaius concentrated the most varied and most
complicated functions of government in his own person. He himself
watched over the distribution of grain, selected the jurymen, founded
the colonies in person notwithstanding that his magistracy legally
chained him to the city, regulated the highways and concluded building-
contracts, led the discussions of the senate, settled the consular
elections--in short, he accustomed the people to the fact that one man
was foremost in all things, and threw the lax and lame administration
of the senatorial college into the shade by the vigour and versatility
of his personal rule. Gracchus interfered with the judicial
omnipotence, still more energetically than with the administration,
of the senate. We have already mentioned that he set aside the
senators as jurymen; the same course was taken with the jurisdiction
which the senate as the supreme administrative board allowed to itself
in exceptional cases. Under severe penalties he prohibited--
apparently in his renewal of the law -de provocatione-(24)--the
appointment of extraordinary commissions of high treason by decree
of the senate, such as that which after his brother's murder had sat
in judgment on his adherents. The aggregate effect of these measures
was, that the senate wholly lost the power of control, and retained
only so much of administration as the head of the sta