the pirates and only longed for domestic
repose, were meant in earnest, there was probably this much
of truth in them, that the bold and active client, who was
in confidential intercourse with Pompeius and his more immediate
circle and who completely saw through the situation and the men,
took the decision to a considerable extent out of the hands
of his shortsighted and resourceless patron.

The Parties in Relation to the Gabinian Laws

The democracy, discontented as its leaders might be in secret,
could not well come publicly forward against the project of law.
It would, to all appearance, have been in no case able to hinder
the carrying of the law; but it would by opposition have openly
broken with Pompeius and thereby compelled him either to make
approaches to the oligarchy or regardlessly to pursue his personal
policy in the face of both parties. No course was left
to the democrats but still even now to adhere to their alliance
with Pompeius, hollow as it was, and to embrace the present opportunity
of at least definitely overthrowing the senate and passing over
from opposition into government, leaving the ulterior issue
to the future and to the well-known weakness of Pompeius' character.
Accordingly their leaders--the praetor Lucius Quinctius, the same
who seven years before had exerted himself for the restoration
of the tribunician power,(11) and the former quaestor Gaius Caesar--
supported the Gabinian proposals.

The privileged classes were furious--not merely the nobility,
but also the mercantile aristocracy, which felt its exclusive
rights endangered by so thorough a state-revolution and once
more recognized its true patron in the senate. When the tribune
Gabinius after the introduction of his proposals appeared
in the senate-house, the fathers of the city were almost on the point
of strangling him with their own hands, without considering in their
zeal how extremely disadvantageous for them this method of arguing
must have ultimately proved. The tribune escaped to the Forum
and summoned the multitude to storm the senate-house, when just
at the right time the sitting terminated. The consul Piso,
the champion of the oligarchy, who accidentally fell into the hands
of the multitude, would have certainly become a victim to popular fury,
had not Gabinius come up and, in order that his certain success
might not be endangered by unseasonable acts of violence, liberated
the consul. Meanwhile the exasperation