r laws were substituted for tribunician; restrictions
on liberty replaced measures of progress. The cancelling of the laws of
Saturninus was a matter of course; the transmarine colonies of Marius
disappeared down to a single petty settlement on the barbarous island
of Corsica. When the tribune of the people Sextus Titius--a caricatured
Alcibiades, who was greater in dancing and ball-playing than in
politics, and whose most prominent talent consisted in breaking the
images of the gods in the streets at night--re-introduced and carried
the Appuleian agrarian law in 655, the senate was able to annul the new
law on a religious pretext without any one even attempting to defend it;
the author of it was punished, as we have already mentioned, by the
equites in their tribunals. Next year (656) a law brought in by the
two consuls made the usual four-and-twenty days' interval between the
introduction and the passing of a project of law obligatory, and forbade
the combination of several enactments different in their nature in one
proposal; by which means the unreasonable extension of the initiative
in legislation was at least somewhat restricted, and the government was
prevented from being openly taken by surprise with new laws. It became
daily more evident that the Gracchan constitution, which had survived
the fall of its author, was now, since the multitude and the moneyed
aristocracy no longer went together, tottering to its foundations.
As that constitution had been based on division in the ranks of
the aristocracy, so it seemed that dissensions in the ranks of the
opposition could not but bring about its fall. Now, if ever, the
time had come for completing the unfinished work of restoration of 633,
for making the Gracchan constitution share the fate of the tyrant,
and for replacing the governing oligarchy in the sole possession
of political power.

Collision between the Senate and Equites in the Administration of
the Provinces

Everything depended on recovering the nomination of the jurymen.
The administration of the provinces--the chief foundation of the
senatorial government--had become dependent on the jury courts, more
particularly on the commission regarding exactions, to such a degree
that the governor of a province seemed to administer it no longer for
the senate, but for the order of capitalists and merchants. Ready as
the moneyed aristocracy always was to meet the views of the government
when measures against