of the accuser himself, at any rate of the more sagacious men
who backed him, was not at all to make this pitiful wretch
die the death of the cross; they were not unwilling to acquiesce,
when first the form of the impeachment was materially modified
by the senate, and then the assembly of the people called to pronounce
sentence on the guilty was dissolved under some sort of pretext
by the opposite party--so that the whole procedure was set aside.
At all events by this process the two palladia of Roman freedom,
the right of the citizens to appeal and the inviolability of the tribunes
of the people, were once more established as practical rights,
and the legal basis on which the democracy rested was adjusted afresh.

Personal Attacks

The democratic reaction manifested still greater vehemence
in all personal questions, wherever it could and dared.
Prudence indeed enjoined it not to urge the restoration of the estates
confiscated by Sulla to their former owners, that it might not quarrel
with its own allies and at the same time fall into a conflict
with material interests, for which a policy with a set purpose
is rarelya match; the recall of the emigrants was too closely connected
with this question of property not to appear quite as unadvisable.
On the other hand great exertions were made to restore to the children
of the proscribed the political rights withdrawn from them (691),
and the heads of the senatorial party were incessantly subjected
to personal attacks. Thus Gaius Memmius set on foot a process aimed
at Marcus Lucullus in 688. Thus they allowed his more famous
brother to wait for three years before the gates of the capital
for his well-deserved triumph (688-691). Quintus Rex and the conqueror
of Crete Quintus Metellus were similarly insulted.

It produced a still greater sensation, when the young leader
of the democracy Gaius Caesar in 691 not merely presumed to compete
with the two most distinguished men of the nobility, Quintus Catulus
and Publius Servilius the victor of Isaura, in the candidature
for the supreme pontificate, but even carried the day
among the burgesses. The heirs of Sulla, especially his son Faustus,
found themselves constantly threatened with an action for the refunding
of the public moneys which, it was alleged, had been embezzled
by the regent. They talked even of resuming the democratic
impeachments suspended in 664 on the basis of the Varian law.(7)
The individuals who had take