later make an attempt to interfere with the selection
of the judices from the equestrian order, and even then the attempt
failed. The scheme of taxation in the province of Asia was also left
untouched. But what they dared to do they did. They prosecuted the
adherents of Gracchus. They recalled Popillius from exile. When
Opimius was arraigned for 'perduellio,' or misuse of his official
power to compass the death of a citizen, they procured his acquittal.
But when Carbo was accused of the same crime, they remembered that he
had been a partisan of Tiberius, though since a renegade, and would
not help him. So while Opimius got off, the champion of Opimius was
driven to commit suicide--a fitting close to a contemptible career.

[Sidenote: Reactionary legislation.] But they soon assailed measures
as well as men. The Lex Baebia appears to have secured those who had
actually established themselves at Carthage in their allotments; but
the Senate annulled the colonies which Caius had planned in Italy,
and, with one exception, Neptunia, broke up those already settled.
[Sidenote: The agrarian law annulled.] Then by three successive
enactments it got rid of the agrarian law, and plunged Italy again
into the decline from which by the help of that law she was emerging.
1. The occupiers were allowed again to sell their land. Tiberius had
expressly forbidden this, and now the rich at once began to buy out
the small owners, whom they often evicted by means more or less
foul. 2. A tribune named Borius, or Thorius, prohibited any further
distribution of land, thus knocking on the head the permanent
commission. These two laws were tantamount to handing over to the
rich in the city and the country the greater part of the public
land, giving them a legal title to it instead of the possession on
sufferance with which the Gracchi had interfered. The mouths of the
farmers were stopped by the pernicious but tempting permission to sell
their land. The people were cajoled by the vectigalia, which Drusus
had abolished, being reimposed, and the proceeds divided among
them. 3. Encouraged by the general acquiescence in these insidious
aggressions they induced a tribune, whose name is conjectured to have
been C. Baebius, to do away with the vectigalia altogether. [Sidenote:
Lex Thoria.] The date of this law, usually called the Thorian law, was
111 B.C. The real Thorian law was probably carried in 118 B.C. Between
these dates the rich would have been get