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had provided to protect the Senate against disturbance were noW done away with. Once more, as in old times, the tribunes were to be permitted to propose laws to the public assembly without having first obtained the Senate's leave. The other disability which had been imposed on them by Sulla, that of never being allowed to stand for any other office if once they had chosen to take the tribunate, seems already to have been removed by a law passed in B.C. 75 by Gaius Cotta. But this relief was a mere nothing to the boon now granted by Pompey and Crassus. The right to deal with the people without any senatus auctoritas was the real strength of the tribunate in all ages.

Secondly, and in this point Crassus was particularly interested, the Equestrian Order, of which he was the patron and lord, was restored to its old position in the state.1 The knights were given back the privilege of farming the taxes of Asia, which Sulla had taken from them. Moreover, the Lex Aurelia restored to them once more a predominant share in the law-courts. They did not obtain, as in the days of Caius Gracchus, a monopoly of judicial power, for in future juries were to be made up of three classes of citizens. One-third were to be senators, one-third equites, one-third tribuni aerarii. But the knights seem to have secured something like their old control, because the third order, the tribuni aerarii were, from their fortune and tendencies, much more akin to them than to the senators: indeed, they were in a sense members of the Equester Ordo. This elaborate subdivision of classes in the courts does not seem, if we may trust Cicero and other witnesses, to have made any

1 The law of Roscius Otho, which completed the rehabilitation of the Knights by giving them back their insigna and their seats in the theatre and circus, belongs to this same cycle of legislation, but was apparently not passed till B.C 67.

sensible improvement in the justice which Roman juries dispensed.

It was almost inevitable that Pompey and Crassus, seeking to ingratiate themselves with the Roman multitude, should hark back to the most popular and the most pernicious item of the old Democratic programme, by developing again the corn-dole, whose abolition had been by far the best of Sulla's measures. But to buy support from any class by lavish expenditure, whether from his own or from the public purse, was a regular part of Crassus's system. A moderate and limited amount of distribution had been restored as early as B.C. 78. But the consuls of B.C. 70 presented every citizen with corn for three months without exacting any payment. Crassus is also said to have given an enormous public dinner to the populace at the feast of Hercules, at which all comers were entertained at ten thousand tables laid down the streets.

Another political move of the consuls was the restoration of the Censorship, which had been practically in abeyance since Sulla's time. The first new censors, Cornelius Clodianus and Gellius Poplicola, celebrated their advent by a wholesale eviction of Sullan partisans from the Senate, which they could do all the more plausibly because many of the sufferers were men of blemished reputation. It will be remembered that the ex-consul Lentulus, the associate of Catiline, was one of the victims of this purging; he was expelled for what the censors called "luxury," i.e. notorious evil living.

It is most noteworthy that Pompey and Crassus did not include in their legislation two measures which any genuine Democrat would have been certain to insert in his programme. The first was the cancelling of the effect of the Sullan Proscription; it would have been natural to secure the return of the exiles, and to restore their status as

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citizens to the "Sons of the Proscribed," whom the dictator had deprived of so many rights. The second obvious measure would have been the institution of an inquiry into the awful deeds of murder and robbery which had been perpetrated, without any shadow of legality, during and previous to the dictatorship. The reason why these subjects were left untouched was that Crassus himself had been deeply implicated in the worst part of the Proscription. He had put men to death illegally, had seized on lands without any good title, and had bought up wholesale the property of the proscribed. Pompey, too, had some acts to his account which would not have looked well when investigated in a court of law, such as the executions of Carbo and M. Brutus. They had, no doubt, been declared outlaws by the Senate, but the officer who had put them to death would have felt some qualms in the days of a real Democratic reaction.

It was therefore impossible for the consuls of B.C. 70 to raise either of these questions, as it would have entailed inquiry into their own conduct, and in the case of Crassus the surrender of masses of ill-gotten property. It was not till a real Democratic programme was being brought forward, somewhat later, by Julius Cæsar, that the idea of the punishment of the people's enemies was mooted, by the celebrated trial of Rabirius for the murder of Saturninus. As to the rank and file of Sulla's assassins, the only person who ever took arms against them was one of their own party, the stern and rigid Cato, who, when he was quaestor, insisted on recovering from them the bloodmoney which the dictator had issued to them without legal warrant.

Though allied to overthrow the supremacy of the Senate, Pompey and Crassus did not learn to love each other any the better during their year of joint office. Their quarrels were unending; "they differed about every

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measure that came before them, and these disputes and altercations prevented each of them from doing many things on which he was set.' It was this notorious enmity which led to a curious scene at the end of their year. When it came to be time for them to make their final orations to the people on quitting office, there stood forward a certain knight named C. Aurelius, a person of no note, who said that Jupiter had appeared to him in a vision, and commanded him to tell the Romans that it would not be lucky for them if they allowed their consuls to remain unreconciled. Wherefore he suggested that they should embrace in public. At this unpalatable proposal, the two magistrates were much disturbed: each stood lowering at his own corner of the rostra. But when the people continued shouting for a long space of time that the consuls must be reconciled, Crassus at last constrained himself—he was far the better hypocrite of the two-went up to Pompey and offered him his hand with a well-turned compliment. They embraced, parted, and hated each other rather more than before. The humorous Aurelius must have extracted huge enjoyment from the little comedy.

The two years that followed the resignation of the consuls on December 31, B.C. 70, are most difficult to understand. We should have expected that the enmity of Pompey and Crassus would have led them into some open outbreak against each other, the moment that they had ceased to be colleagues. But nothing of the kind happened; it seemed as if each had destroyed his rival's power of initiative. They remained watching each other and did nothing more. The Senate, which had thought that its last day had been at hand, was able to breathe again and to seek feebly to reassert itself. It had been generally expected that Pompey would choose some important province, and would provide himself

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with another army to replace that which he had disbanded after his Spanish triumph; but this was far from his thoughts; before his consulate expired he expressly disclaimed any such idea, and for the whole of 69-68 he remained quietly in Rome living the life of a private citizen. Probably the sight of his rival in retirement soothed down the anger of Crassus, who had half expected him to aim at a tyranny. For he too kept quiet, and relapsed into his normal round of money-making and wire-pulling on the back-stairs side of politics.

So things remained, the two great men keeping each other under close observation, but making no offensive move, till Pompey was at last called away by the Gabinian Law (B.C. 67), which gave him the command against the Pirates. In consequence of this commission, and of the subsequent Manilian Law, which transferred to him the command against Mithradates, he was absent from Rome for nearly seven years. Crassus had at first intrigued against the assignation of such important charges to his rival, yet, when he was gone, was glad to see the political stage left clear for his own action. While Pompey was away, he would have a better chance of convincing the Roman people that he was their true friend, and of carrying out his plans for his own personal aggrandisement. But, as we shall see, all the political intrigues of Crassus failed: while Pompey in the distant East was adding laurels to laurels in a way that kept his name perpetually before the citizens, and made it probable that when he should return, with his army at his back, he might ask for anything that he chose, with a perfect certainty of receiving it.

We seem to trace in the doings of Crassus during Pompey's absence in the East a progressive series of measures, by which he hoped to commend himself to the Democratic party, and to establish himself as their leader so firmly