ven
made a subject of investigation (665). On the other hand it was
said in the circles of the debtors, that the suffering multitude could
not be relieved otherwise than by "new account-books," that is, by
legally cancelling the claims of all creditors against all debtors.
Matters stood again exactly as they had stood during the strife
of the orders; once more the capitalists in league with the
prejudiced aristocracy made war against, and prosecuted, the oppressed
multitude and the middle party which advised a modification of the
rigour of the law; once more Rome stood on the verge of that abyss
into which the despairing debtor drags his creditor along with him.
Only, since that time the simple civil and moral organization of a
great agricultural city had been succeeded by the social antagonisms
of a capital of many nations, and by that demoralization in which
the prince and the beggar meet; now all incongruities had come to be
on a broader, more abrupt, and fearfully grander scale. When the
Social war brought all the political and social elements fermenting
among the citizens into collision with each other, it laid the
foundation for a new resolution. An accident led to its outbreak.

The Sulpician Laws
Sulpicius Rufus

It was the tribune of the people Publius Sulpicius Rufus who in 666
proposed to the burgesses to declare that every senator, who owed more
than 2000 -denarii- (82 pounds), should forfeit his seat in the senate;
to grant to the burgesses condemned by non-free jury courts liberty
to return home; to distribute the new burgesses among all the tribes,
and likewise to allow the right of voting in all tribes to the
freedmen. They were proposals which from the mouth of such a man
were at least somewhat surprising. Publius Sulpicius Rufus (born in
630) owed his political importance not so much to his noble birth, his
important connections, and his hereditary wealth, as to his remarkable
oratorical talent, in which none of his contemporaries equalled him.
His powerful voice, his lively gestures sometimes bordering on
theatrical display, the luxuriant copiousness of his flow of words
arrested, even if they did not convince, his hearers. As a partisan
he was from the outset on the side of the senate, and his first public
appearance (659) had been the impeachment of Norbanus who was mortally
hated by the government party.(22) Among the conservatives he belonged
to the section of Crassus and Drusus. We do