for the praetorship, in which to the scandal of the whole burgesses
Caesar's client Vatinius had during the previous year beaten him
off the field. At the elections for 701 the opposition succeeded
in so indisputably convicting the candidates of the regents,
along with others, of the most shameful electioneering intrigues
that the regents, on whom the scandal recoiled, could not do otherwise
than abandon them. These repeated and severe defeats of the dynasts
on the battle-field of the elections may be traceable in part
to the unmanageableness of the rusty machinery, to the incalculable
accidents of the polling, to the opposition at heart of the middle
classes, to the various private considerations that interfere
in such cases and often strangely clash with those of party;
but the main cause lies elsewhere. The elections were at this time
essentially in the power of the different clubs into which the aristocracy
had grouped themselves; the system of bribery was organized by them
on the most extensive scale and with the utmost method.
The same aristocracy therefore, which was represented in the senate,
ruled also the elections; but while in the senate it yielded
with a grudge, it worked and voted here--in secret and secure
from all reckoning--absolutely against the regents. That the influence
of the nobility in this field was by no means broken by the strict
penal law against the electioneering intrigues of the clubs,
which Crassus when consul in 699 caused to be confirmed by the burgesses,
is self-evident, and is shown by the elections of the succeeding years.

And in the Courts

The jury-courts occasioned equally great difficulty to the regents.
As they were then composed, while the senatorial nobility was here
also influential, the decisive voice lay chiefly with the middle class.
The fixing of a high-rated census for jurymen by a law proposed
by Pompeius in 699 is a remarkable proof that the opposition
to the regents had its chief seat in the middle class properly
so called, and that the great capitalists showed themselves here,
as everywhere, more compliant than the latter. Nevertheless
the republican party was not yet deprived of all hold in the courts,
and it was never weary of directing political impeachments,
not indeed against the regents themselves, but against
their prominent instruments. This warfare of prosecutions
was waged the more keenly, that according to usage the duty of accusation
belonged t