nate.
Caius was the greatest orator of all his contemporaries; the contagion
of his eloquence was irresistible, and the enthusiasm of the people
enabled him to carry every thing before him.

I. His principal laws for improving the condition of the people were:

1. The extension of the Agrarian Law of his brother by planting new
colonies in Italy and the provinces.

2. A state provision for the poor, enacting that corn should be sold to
every citizen at a price much below its market value. This was the first
of the _Leges Frumentariae_, which were attended with the most injurious
effects. They emptied the treasury, at the same time that they taught
the poor to become state paupers, instead of depending upon their own
exertions for a living.

3. Another law enacted that the soldiers should be equipped at the
expense of the Republic, without the cost being deducted from their pay,
as had hitherto been the case.

II. The most important laws designed to diminish the power of the Senate
were:

1. The law by which the Judices were to be taken only from the Equites,
and not from the Senators, as had been the custom hitherto. This was a
very important enactment, and needs a little explanation. All offenses
against the state were originally tried in the Popular Assembly; but
when special enactments were passed for the trial of particular
offenses, the practice was introduced of forming a body of Judices for
the trial of these offenses. This was first done upon the passing of the
Calpurnian Law (B.C., 149) for the punishment of provincial magistrates
for extortion in their government (_De Repetendis_). Such offenses had
to be tried before the Praetor and a jury of Senators; but as these very
Senators either had been or hoped to be provincial magistrates, they
were not disposed to visit with severity offenses of which they
themselves either had been or were likely to be guilty. By depriving the
Senators of this judicial power, and by transferring it to the Equites,
Gracchus also made the latter a political order in the state apart from
their military character. The name of Equites was now applied to all
persons who were qualified by their fortune to act as Judices, whether
they served in the army or not. From this time is dated the creation of
an _Ordo Equestris_, whose interests were frequently opposed to those of
the Senate, and who therefore served as a check upon the latter.

2. Another law was directed against the arbi