choice of an absent
person, excluded Pompeius; and the diminution of the tribes entitled
to vote as well as the manipulation of the balloting were designed
to facilitate the management of the election in accordance
with the views of the democracy.

But this attempt totally missed its aim. The multitude, finding
it more agreeable to have their corn measured out to them
under the shade of Roman porticoes from the public magazines
than to cultivate it for themselves in the sweat of their brow,
received even the proposal in itself with complete indifference.
They soon came also to feel that Pompeius would never acquiesce
in such a resolution offensive to him in every respect, and that matters
could not stand well with a party which in its painful alarm
condescended to offers so extravagant. Under such circumstances
it was not difficult for the government to frustrate the proposal;
the new consul Cicero perceived the opportunity of exhibiting
here too his talent for giving a finishing stroke to the beaten party;
even before the tribunes who stood ready exercised their veto,
the author himself withdrew his proposal (1 Jan. 691).
The democracy had gained nothing but the unpleasant lesson,
that the great multitude out of love or fear still continued
to adhere to Pompeius, and that every proposal was certain
to fail which the public perceived to be directed against him.

Preparations of the Anarchists in Etruria

Wearied by all this vain agitation and scheming without result,
Catilina determined to push the matter to a decision and make
an end of it once for all. He took his measures in the course
of the summer to open the civil war. Faesulae (Fiesole),
a very strong town situated in Etruria--which swarmed with
the impoverished and conspirators--and fifteen years before the centre
of the rising of Lepidus, was again selected as the headquarters
of the insurrection. Thither were despatched the consignments
of money, for which especially the ladies of quality in the capital
implicated in the conspiracy furnished the means; there arms
and soldiers were collected; and there an old Sullan captain, Gaius
Manlius, as brave and as free from scruples of conscience
as was ever any soldier of fortune, took temporarily the chief command.
Similar though less extensive warlike preparations were made
at other points of Italy. The Transpadanes were so excited
that they seemed only waiting for the signal to strike. In the Bruttian
c