id of the capitalist class and the
proletariate. His successors did not neglect to make advances likewise
to these. The equites were not only left in possession of the
tribunals, but their power as jurymen was considerably increased, partly
by a stricter ordinance regarding the standing commission--especially
important to the merchants--as to extortions on the part of the public
magistrates in the provinces, which Glaucia carried probably in this
year, partly by the special tribunal, appointed doubtless as early as
651 on the proposal of Saturninus, respecting the embezzlements and
other official malversations that had occurred during the Cimbrian
movement in Gaul. For the benefit, moreover, of the proletariate of
the capital the sum below cost price, which hitherto had to be paid on
occasion of the distributions of grain for the -modius-, was lowered
from 6 1/3 -asses- to a mere nominal charge of 5/6 of an -as-.
But although they did not despise the alliance with the equites and
the proletariate of the capital, the real power by which the confederates
enforced their measures lay not in these, but in the discharged soldiers
of the Marian army, who for that very reason had been provided for in
the colonial laws themselves after so extravagant a fashion. In this
also was evinced the predominating military character, which forms
the chief distinction between this attempt at revolution and that
which preceded it.

Violent Proceedings in the Voting

They went to work accordingly. The corn and colonial laws encountered,
as was to be expected, the keenest opposition from the government.
They proved in the senate by striking figures, that the former must
make the public treasury bankrupt; Saturninus did not trouble himself
about that. They brought tribunician intercession to bear against
both laws; Saturninus ordered the voting to go on. They informed
the magistrates presiding at the voting that a peal of thunder had
been heard, a portent by which according to ancient belief the gods
enjoined the dismissal of the public assembly; Saturninus remarked
to the messengers that the senate would do well to keep quiet, otherwise
the thunder might very easily be followed by hail. Lastly the urban
quaestor, Quintus Caepio, the son, it may be presumed, of the general
condemned three years before,(8) and like his father a vehement
antagonist of the popular party, with a band of devoted partisans
dispersed the comitia by violence.