The Gabinio-Manilian proposals terminated the struggle between the senate and the popular party, which the Sempronian laws had begun sixty-seven years before.  As the Sempronian laws first constituted the revolutionary party into a political opposition, the Gabinio-Manilian first converted it from an opposition into the government; and as it had been a great moment when the first breach in the existing constitution was made by disregarding the veto of Octavius, it was a moment no less full of significance when the last bulwark of the senatorial rule fell with the withdrawal of Trebellius.  This was felt on both sides and even the indolent souls of the senators were convulsively roused by this death-struggle; but yet the war as to the constitution terminated in a very different and far more pitiful fashion than it had begun.  A youth in every sense noble had commenced the revolution; it was concluded by pert intriguers and demagogues of the lowest type.  On the other hand, while the Optimates had begun the struggle with a measured resistance and with a defence which earnestly held out even at the forlorn posts, they ended with taking the initiative in club-law, with grandiloquent weakness, and with pitiful perjury.  What had once appeared a daring dream, was now attained; the senate had ceased to govern.  But when the few old men who had seen the first storms of revolution and heard the words of the Gracchi, compared that time with the present they found that everything had in the interval changed—­countrymen and citizens, state-law and military discipline, life and manners; and well might those painfully smile, who compared the ideals of the Gracchan period with their realization.  Such reflections however belonged to the past.  For the present and perhaps also for the future the fall of the aristocracy was an accomplished fact.  The oligarchs resembled an army utterly broken up, whose scattered bands might serve to reinforce another body of troops, but could no longer themselves keep the field or risk a combat on their own account.  But as the old struggle came to an end, a new one was simultaneously beginning—­the struggle between the two powers hitherto leagued for the overthrow of the aristocratic constitution, the civil-democratic opposition and the military power daily aspiring to greater ascendency.  The exceptional position of Pompeius even under the Gabinian, and much more under the Manilian, law was incompatible with a republican organization.  He had been as even then his opponents urged with good reason, appointed by the Gabinian law not as admiral, but as regent of the empire; not unjustly was he designated by a Greek familiar with eastern affairs “king of kings.”  If he should hereafter, on returning from the east once more victorious and with increased glory, with well-filled chests, and with troops ready for battle and devoted to his cause, stretch forth his hand to seize the crown—­who would then arrest his arm?  Was the consular Quintus Catulus, forsooth,