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 state thought fit
to leave to it. But these constitutive measures were not enough; the
governing aristocracy for the time being was also directly assailed.
It was a mere act of revenge, which assigned retrospective effect to
the last-mentioned law and thereby compelled Publius Popillius--the
aristocrat who after the death of Nasica, which had occurred in the
interval, was chiefly obnoxious to the democrats--to go into exile.
It is remarkable that this proposal was only carried by 18 to 17
votes in the assembly of the tribes--a sign how much the influence
of the aristocracy still availed with the multitude, at least in
questions of a personal interest. A similar but far less justifiable
decree--the proposal, directed against Marcus Octavius, that whoever
had been deprived of his office by decree of the people should be
for ever incapable of filling a public post--was recalled by Gaius
at the request of his mother; and he was thus spared the disgrace
of openly mocking justice by legalizing a notorious violation of
the constitution, and of taking base vengeance on a man of honour,
who had not spoken an angry word against Tiberius and had only acted
constitutionally and in accordance with what he conceived to be
his duty. But of very different importance from these measures was
the scheme of Gaius--which, it is true, was hardly carried into effect--
to strengthen the senate by 300 new members, that is, by just about as
many as it hitherto had contained, and to have them elected from the
equestrian order by the comitia--a creation of peers after the most
comprehensive style, which would have reduced the senate into the most
complete dependence on the chief of the state.

Character of the Constitution of Gaius Gracchus

This was the political constitution which Gaius Gracchus projected
and, in its most essential points, carried out during the two years
of his tribunate (631, 632), without, so far as we can see,
encountering any resistance worthy of mention