same men who played the leading part in the great mercantile
associations, particularly those farming the revenues in Asia and
elsewhere, just because these had a very close personal interest in
sitting in the courts; and, if the lists of jurymen and the societies
of -publicani- thus coincided as regards their chiefs, we can all
the better understand the significance of the counter-senate thus
constituted. The substantial effect of this was, that, while hitherto
there had been only two authorities in the state--the government as the
administering and controlling, and the burgesses as the legislative,
authority--and the courts had been divided between them, now the moneyed
aristocracy was not only united into a compact and privileged class on
the solid basis of material interests, but also, as a judicial and
controlling power, formed part of the state and took its place almost
on a footing of equality by the side of the ruling aristocracy. All
the old antipathies of the merchants against the nobility could not
but thenceforth find only too practical an expression in the sentences
of the jurymen; above all, when the provincial governors were called
to a reckoning, the senator had to await a decision involving his
civic existence at the hands no longer as formerly of his peers,
but of great merchants and bankers. The feuds between the Roman
capitalists and the Roman governors were transplanted from the
provincial administration to the dangerous field of these processes
of reckoning. Not only was the aristocracy of the rich divided, but
care was taken that the variance should always find fresh nourishment
and easy expression.

Monarchical Government Substituted for That of the Senate

With his weapons--the proletariate and the mercantile class--thus
prepared, Gracchus set about his main work, the overthrow of the
ruling aristocracy. The overthrow of the senate meant, on the one
hand, the depriving it of its essential functions by legislative
alterations; and on the other hand, the ruining of the existing
aristocracy by measures of a more personal and transient kind.
Gracchus did both. The function of administration, in particular,
had hitherto belonged exclusively to the senate; Gracchus took it away,
partly by settling the most important administrative questions by means
of comitial laws or, in other words, practically through tribunician
dictation, partly by restricting the senate as much as possible
in current af