Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 2.djvu/375

Rh estate left by a king: these, the tribunes, by procurement of the elder Gracchus, declared by their legislative authority, were not to be disposed of by the nobles, but by the commons only. The younger brother pursued the same design; and besides, obtained a law, that all Italians should vote at elections, as well as the citizens of Rome: in short, the whole endeavours of them both perpetually turned upon retrenching the nobles authority in all things, but especially in the matter of judicature. And though they both lost their lives in those pursuits, yet they traced out such ways, as were afterward followed by Marius, Sylla, Pompey and Cæsar, to the ruin of the Roman freedom and greatness.

For in the time of Marius, Saturninus a tribune procured a law, that the senate should be bound by oath to agree to whatever the people would enact: and Marius himself, while he was in that office of tribune, is recorded to have with great industry used all endeavours for depressing the nobles, and raising the people, particularly for cramping the former in their power of judicature, which was their most ancient inherent right.

Sylla, by the same measures, became absolute tyrant of Rome: he added three hundred commons to the senate, which perplexed the power of the whole order, and rendered it ineffectual; then flinging off the mask, he abolished the office of tribune, as being only a scaffold to tyranny, whereof he had no farther use.

As to Pompey and Cæsar, Plutarch tells us, that their union for pulling down the nobles (by their credit with the people) was the cause of the civil war, which ended in the tyranny of the latter; both Rh