the Gracchan equestrian courts. In future--so it
was enacted by the new Aurelian law--the colleges of jurymen
were to consist one-third of senators and two-thirds of men
of equestrian census, and of the latter the half must have rilled
the office of district-presidents, or so-called -tribuni aerarii-.
This last innovation was a farther concession made to the democrats,
inasmuch as according to it at least a third part of the criminal
jurymen were indirectly derived from the elections of the tribes.
The reason, again, why the senate was not totally excluded
from the courts is probably to be sought partly in the relations
of Crassus to the senate, partly in the accession of the senatorial
middle party to the coalition; with which is doubtless connected
the circumstance that this law was brought in by the praetor Lucius
Cotta, the brother of their lately deceased leader.

Renewal of the Asiatic Revenue-Farming

Not less important was the abolition of the arrangements
as to taxation established for Asia by Sulla,(3) which presumably
likewise fell to this year. The governor of Asia at that time,
Lucius Lucullus, was directed to reestablish the system of farming
the revenue introduced by Gaius Gracchus; and thus this important
source of money and power was restored to the great capitalists.

Renewal of the Censorship

Lastly, the censorship was revived. The elections for it,
which the new consuls fixed shortly after entering on their office,
fell, in evident mockery of the senate, on the two consuls of 682,
Gnaeus Lentulus Clodianus and Lucius Gellius, who had been removed
by the senate from their commands on account of their wretched
management of the war against Spartacus.(4) It may readily be conceived
that these men put in motion all the means which their important
and grave office placed at their command, for the purpose of doing
homage to the new-holders of power and of annoying the senate.
At least an eighth part of the senate, sixty-four senators, a number
hitherto unparalleled, were deleted from the roll, including Gaius
Antonius, formerly impeached without success by Gaius Caesar,(5)
and Publius Lentulus Sura, the consul of 683, and presumably also
not a few of the most obnoxious creatures of Sulla.

The New Constitution

Thus in 684 they had reverted in the main to the arrangements
that subsisted before the Sullan restoration.

Again the multitude of the capital was fed from the state-chest,
in other