the -comitia-, though they were far from dealing strictly in the matter of qualification, it was on the whole burgesses alone that appeared, in the mere popular assemblages on the other hand—­the -contiones—–­every one in the shape of a man was entitled to take his place and to shout, Egyptians and Jews, street-boys and slaves.  Such a “meeting” certainly had no significance in the eyes of the law; it could neither vote nor decree.  But it practically ruled the street, and already the opinion of the street was a power in Rome, so that it was of some importance whether this confused mass received the communications made to it with silence or shouts, whether it applauded and rejoiced or hissed and howled at the orator.  Not many had the courage to lord it over the populace as Scipio Aemilianus did, when they hissed him on account of his expression as to the death of his brother-in-law.  “Ye,” he said, “to whom Italy is not mother but step-mother, ought to keep silence!” and when their fury grew still louder, “Surely you do not think that I will fear those let loose, whom I have sent in chains to the slave-market?”

That the rusty machinery of the comitia should be made use of for the elections and for legislation, was already bad enough.  But when those masses—­the -comitia- primarily, and practically also the -contiones—–­ were permitted to interfere in the administration, and the instrument which the senate employed to prevent such interferences was wrested out of its hands; when this so-called burgess-body was allowed to decree to itself lands along with all their appurtenances out of the public purse; when any one, whom circumstances and his influence with the proletariate enabled to command the streets for a few hours, found it possible to impress on his projects the legal stamp of the sovereign people’s will, Rome had reached not the beginning, but the end of popular freedom—­had arrived not at democracy, but at monarchy.  For that reason in the previous period Cato and those who shared his views never brought such questions before the burgesses, but discussed them solely in the senate.(37) For that reason contemporaries of Gracchus, the men of the Scipionic circle, described the Flaminian agrarian law of 522—­the first step in that fatal career—­as the beginning of the decline of Roman greatness.  For that reason they allowed the author of the domain-distribution to fall, and saw in his dreadful end, as it were, a rampart against similar attempts in future, while yet they maintained and turned to account with all their energy the domain-distribution itself which he had carried through—­so sad was the state of things in Rome that honest patriots were forced into the horrible hypocrisy of abandoning the evil-doer and yet appropriating the fruit of the evil deed.  For that reason too the opponents of Gracchus were in a certain sense not wrong, when they accused him of aspiring to the crown.  For him it is a fresh impeachment rather than a justification, that he himself was probably a stranger to any such thought.  The aristocratic government was so thoroughly pernicious, that the citizen, who was able to depose the senate and to put himself in its place, might perhaps benefit the commonwealth more than he injured it.