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214 , but as a portion of constitutional law. It was a machinery contrived to extend the power of veto (for under this form it might be used by the consul even against a tribune), and to make its application more easy and convenient.

Driven by armed force from the Forum, Bibulus now resorted to this method. He shut himself up in his house, and on every day when the people assembled he "saw lightning" and caused an official intimation of it to be sent to Cæsar. Cæsar systematically ignored the prohibition and passed his measures one by one. He thereby broke the law, and usurped powers which were not his. As consul he had the legal right to propose measures to the people, but only provided that his initiative was not lawfully impeded. His colleague had an absolute right to forbid him. The whole business of the lightning was indeed a constitutional fiction, and absurd enough in itself; but it was not more absurd than the other fiction, that by reading a bill to the handful of partisans whom he could collect in the Forum, Cæsar had obtained the sanction of the nine hundred thousand Roman citizens who were scattered through Italy. Bibulus effected his purpose, so far as this, that he established abundant and valid grounds for hereafter setting aside the laws of Cæsar, if ever the constitutional party should again become strong enough to insist on its rights.

The moment that Cæsar received his governorship of Cisalpine Gaul, which legally commenced on