youths than among the older members of their order.  Certainly the courts were not free; if the regents were in earnest, the courts ventured as little as the senate to refuse obedience.  None of their antagonists were prosecuted by the opposition with such hatred—­so furious that it almost passed into a proverb—­as Vatinius, by far the most audacious and unscrupulous of the closer adherents of Caesar; but his master gave the command, and he was acquitted in all the processes raised against him.  But impeachments by men who knew how to wield the sword of dialectics and the lash of sarcasm as did Gaius Licinius Calvus and Gaius Asinius Pollio, did not miss their mark even when they failed; nor were isolated successes wanting.  They were mostly, no doubt, obtained over subordinate individuals, but even one of the most high-placed and most hated adherents of the dynasts, the consular Gabinius, was overthrown in this way.  Certainly in his case the implacable hatred of the aristocracy, which as little forgave him for the law regarding the conducting of the war with the pirates as for his disparaging treatment of the senate during his Syrian governorship, was combined with the rage of the great capitalists, against whom he had when governor of Syria ventured to defend the interests of the provincials, and even with the resentment of Crassus, with whom he had stood on ceremony in handing over to him the province.  His only protection against all these foes was Pompeius, and the latter had every reason to defend his ablest, boldest, and most faithful adjutant at any price; but here, as everywhere, he knew not how to use his power and to defend his clients, as Caesar defended his; in the end of 700 the jurymen found Gabinius guilty of extortions and sent him into banishment.

On the whole, therefore, in the sphere of the popular elections and of the jury-courts it was the regents that fared worst.  The factors which ruled in these were less tangible, and therefore more difficult to be terrified or corrupted than the direct organs of government and administration.  The holders of power encountered here, especially in the popular elections, the tough energy of a close oligarchy—­grouped in coteries—­which is by no means finally disposed of when its rule is overthrown, and which is the more difficult to vanquish the more covert its action.  They encountered here too, especially in the jury-courts, the repugnance of the middle classes towards the new monarchical rule, which with all the perplexities springing out of it they were as little able to remove.  They suffered in both quarters a series of defeats.  The election-victories of the opposition had, it is true, merely the value of demonstrations, since the regents possessed and employed the means of practically annulling any magistrate whom they disliked; but the criminal trials in which the opposition carried condemnations deprived them, in a way keenly felt, of useful auxiliaries.  As things stood, the regents could neither set aside nor adequately control the popular elections and the jury-courts, and the opposition, however much it felt itself straitened even here, maintained to a certain extent the field of battle.