rassus. On the other hand
the same leaders appeared by no means disposed to advocate
the political equalization of the freedmen; the tribune of the people
Gaius Manilius, who in a thinly attended assembly had procured
the renewal (31 Dec. 687) of the Sulpician law as to the suffrage
of freedmen,(4) was immediately disavowed by the leading men
of the democracy, and with their consent the law was cancelled
by the senate on the very day after its passing. In the same spirit
all the strangers, who possessed neither Roman nor Latin burgess-
rights, were ejected from the capital by decree of the people
in 689. It is obvious that the intrinsic inconsistency
of the Gracchan policy--in abetting at once the effort of the excluded
to obtain admission into the circle of the privileged, and the effort
of the privileged to maintain their distinctive rights--had passed
over to their successors; while Caesar and his friends on the one hand
held forth to the Transpadanes the prospect of the franchise,
they on the other hand gave their assent to the continuance
of the disabilities of the freedmen, and to the barbarous setting aside
of the rivalry which the industry and trading skill of the Hellenes
and Orientals maintained with the Italians in Italy itself.

Process against Rabirius

The mode in which the democracy dealt with the ancient criminal
jurisdiction of the comitia was characteristic. It had not been
properly abolished by Sulla, but practically the jury-commissions
on high treason and murder had superseded it,(5) and no rational
man could think of seriously re-establishing the old procedure
which long before Sulla had been thoroughly unpractical.
But as the idea of the sovereignty of the people appeared to require
a recognition at least in principle of the penal jurisdiction
of the burgesses, the tribune of the people Titus Labienus in 691
brought the old man, who thirty-eight years before had slain or was
alleged to have slain the tribune of the people Lucius Saturninus,(6)
before the same high court of criminal jurisdiction, by virtue of which,
if the annals reported truly, king Tullus had procured the acquittal
of the Horatius who had killed his sister. The accused was one
Gaius Rabirius, who, if he had not killed Saturninus,
had at least paraded with his cut-off head at the tables
of men of rank, and who moreover was notorious among the Apulian
landholders for his kidnapping and his bloody deeds. The object,
if not