sulship
of 703was frustrated. The opposition of speeches and pamphlets
received through the new judicial ordinance a blow from which
it never recovered; the dreaded forensic eloquence was thereby
driven from the field of politics, and thenceforth felt
the restraints of monarchy. Opposition of course had not disappeared
either from the minds of the great majority of the nation
or even wholly from public life--to effect that end the popular elections,
the jury-courts, and literature must have been not merely restricted,
but annihilated. Indeed, in these very transactions themselves,
Pompeius by his unskilfulness and perversity helped the republicans
to gain even under his dictatorship several triumphs which
he severely felt. The special measures, which the rulers took
to strengthen their power, were of course officially characterized
as enactments made in the interest of public tranquillity and order,
and every burgess, who did not desire anarchy, was described
as substantially concurring in them. But Pompeius pushed
this transparent fiction so far, that instead of putting
safe instruments into the special commission for the investigation
of the last tumult, he chose the most respectable men of all parties,
including even Cato, and applied his influence over the court essentially
to maintain order, and to render it impossible for his adherents
as well as for his opponents to indulge in the scenes of disturbance
customary in the courts of this period. This neutrality of the regent
was discernible in the judgments of the special court. The jurymen
did not venture to acquit Milo himself; but most of the subordinate
persons accused belonging to the party of the republican opposition
were acquitted, while condemnation inexorably befell those
who in the last riot had taken part for Clodius, or in other words
for the regents, including not a few of Caesar's and of Pompeius' own
most intimate friends--even Hypsaeus his candidate for the consulship,
and the tribunes of the people Plancus and Rufus, who had directed
the -emeute- in his interest. That Pompeius did not prevent
their condemnation for the sake of appearing impartial, was one specimen
of his folly; and a second was, that he withal in matters
quite indifferent violated his own laws to favour his friends--
appearing for example as a witness to character in the trial of Plancus,
and in fact protecting from condemnation several accused persons
specially connected w