on the suffrage of freedmen, was for long the only
attempt--and that a very tame one--on the part of the senatorial
government once more to restrain their mob-tyrants. The proposal,
which the consul Quintus Caepio seventeen years after the introduction
of the equestrian tribunals (648) brought in for again entrusting the
trials to senatorial jurymen, showed what the government wished; but
showed also how little it could do, when the question was one not
of squandering domains but of carrying a measure in the face of
an influential order. It broke down.(5) The government was not
emancipated from the inconvenient associates who shared its power;
but these measures probably contributed still further to disturb the
never sincere agreement of the ruling aristocracy with the merchant-
class and the proletariate. Both were very well aware, that the
senate granted all its concessions only from fear and with reluctance;
permanently attached to the rule of the senate by considerations
neither of gratitude nor of interest, both were very ready to render
similar services to any other master who offered them more or even as
much, and had no objection, if an opportunity occurred, to cheat or
to thwart the senate. Thus the restoration continued to govern with
the desires and sentiments of a legitimate aristocracy, and with
the constitution and means of government of a -tyrannis-. Its rule
not only rested on the same bases as that of Gracchus, but it was
equally ill, and in fact still worse, consolidated; it was strong,
when in league with the populace it overthrew serviceable
institutions, but it was utterly powerless, when it had to face the
bands of the streets or the interests of the merchants. It sat on
the vacated throne with an evil conscience and divided hopes, indignant
at the institutions of the state which it ruled and yet incapable of
even systematically assailing them, vacillating in all its conduct
except where its own material advantage prompted a decision, a picture
of faithlessness towards its own as well as the opposite party, of
inward inconsistency, of the most pitiful impotence, of the meanest
selfishness--an unsurpassed ideal of misrule.

The Men of the Restoration

It could not be otherwise; the whole nation was in a state of
intellectual and moral decline, but especially the upper classes.
The aristocracy before the period of the Gracchi was truly not over-
rich in talent, and the benches of the senate