er, according to the lowest estimate, of 4000.

Government of Cinna

Along with the reign of terror came the -tyrannis-. Cinna not
only stood at the head of the state for four years in succession
(667-670) as consul, but he regularly nominated himself and his
colleagues without consulting the people; it seemed as if these
democrats set aside the sovereign popular assembly with intentional
contempt. No other chief of the popular party, before or
afterwards, possessed so perfectly absolute a power in Italy
and in the greater part of the provinces for so long a time almost
undisturbed, as Cinna; but no one can be named, whose government
was so utterly worthless and aimless. The law proposed by
Sulpicius and thereafter by Cinna himself, which promised to
the new burgesses and the freedmen equality of suffrage with the
old burgesses, was naturally revived; and it was formally confirmed
by a decree of the senate as valid in law (670). Censors were
nominated (668) for the purpose of distributing all the Italians,
in accordance with it, into the thirty-five burgess-districts--by a
singular conjuncture, in consequence of a want of qualified
candidates for the censorship the same Philippus, who when consul
in 663 had chiefly occasioned the miscarriage of the plan of Drusus
for bestowing the franchise on the Italians,(8) was now selected
as censor to inscribe them in the burgess-rolls. The reactionary
institutions established by Sulla in 666 were of course overthrown.
Some steps were taken to please the proletariate--for instance,
the restrictions on the distribution of grain introduced some years
ago,(9) were probably now once more removed; the design of Gaius
Gracchus to found a colony at Capua was in reality carried out
in the spring of 671 on the proposal of the tribune of the people,
Marcus Junius Brutus; Lucius Valerius Flaccus the younger
introduced a law as to debt, which reduced every private claim to
the fourth part of its nominal amount and cancelled three fourths
in favour of the debtors. But these measures, the only positive
ones during the whole Cinnan government, were without exception the
dictates of the moment; they were based--and this is perhaps the
most shocking feature in this whole catastrophe--not on a plan
possibly erroneous, but on no political plan at all. The populace
were caressed, and at the same time offended in a very unnecessary
way by a meaningless disregard of the constitutional arrangem