Page:Roman Constitutional History, 753-44 B.C..djvu/231

Rh from six to seven millions — about the same as that of the state of New York in 1900 a.d.

Thus the aristocratic consuls, who had helped to establish the constitution of Sulla, destroyed its most important aristo- cratic features — a result which the oligarchy richly deserved on account of its incompetence, remissness, and corruption. But they did not, and could not, identify themselves with the democratic party; hence they neither recalled the pro- scribed, nor removed the disqualifications of their children, nor reinstated those dispossessed of their property by the confiscations.

II. The Extraordinary Commands of Pompeius.

Alliance of the Oligarchy and the Knights. — Pompeius, who for a time had loomed up as the future master of Rome, resigned his consulship at the end of 70, and, declining a province, returned to private life. His retirement largely restored the political situation of the Marian epoch, but the democratic party was without a leader, and for the time being the knights were the chief gainers. Courted by the oligarchy and the democracy alike, they gradually allied themselves with the former — even wolves hunt in packs — and recovered their old influence over the senatorial government. During the rule of Sulla they seem to have been deprived of their fourteen rows of seats at the theatre. They now regained them by the Roscian law. This enactment was, as it were, a public announcement of the new compact of the two classes (concordia ordinum).

Laws of Gaius Cornelius. — Nevertheless, the oligarchic abuses soon incited democratic attacks. Before the dictatorship of Sulla the senate had claimed that in emergencies it had the power to grant a dispensation from a law, subject to a subsequent ratification by the people, but it had made no extensive use of this privilege. Afterward, however, it