the fact that he, like the whole middle party, had been persecuted as revolutionary by the conservatives, and to have by no means intended an overthrow of the constitution in the sense of Gaius Gracchus.  It would rather seem that, as the only man of note belonging to the party of Crassus and Drusus who had come forth uninjured from the storm of the Varian prosecutions, he felt himself called on to complete the work of Drusus and finally to set aside the still subsisting disabilities of the new burgesses—­for which purpose he needed the tribunate.  Several acts of his even during his tribuneship are mentioned, which betray the very opposite of demagogic designs.  For instance, he prevented by his veto one of his colleagues from cancelling through a decree of the people the sentences of jurymen issued under the Varian law; and when the late aedile Gaius Caesar, passing over the praetorship, unconstitutionally became a candidate for the consulship for 667, with the design, it was alleged, of getting the charge of the Asiatic war afterwards entrusted to him, Sulpicius opposed him more resolutely and sharply than any one else.  Entirely in the spirit of Drusus, he thus demanded from himself as from others primarily and especially the maintenance of the constitution.  But in fact he was as little able as was Drusus to reconcile things that were incompatible, and to carry out in strict form of law the change of the constitution which he had in view—­a change judicious in itself, but never to be obtained from the great majority of the old burgesses by amicable means.  His breach with the powerful family of the Julii—­among whom in particular the consular Lucius Caesar, the brother of Gaius, was very influential in the senate—­ and withthesectionof the aristocracy adhering to it, beyond doubt materially cooperated and carried the irascible man through personal exasperation beyond his original design.

Tendency of These Laws

Yet the proposals brought in by him were of such a nature as to be by no means out of keeping with the personal character and the previous party-position of their author.  The equalization of the new burgesses with the old was simply a partial resumption of the proposals drawn up by Drusus in favour of the Italians; and, like these, only carried out the requirements of a sound policy.  The recall of those condemned by the Varian jurymen no doubt sacrificed the principle of the inviolability of such a sentence, in defence of which Sulpicius himself had just practically interposed; but it mainly benefited in the first instance the members of the proposer’s own party, the moderate conservatives, and it may be very well conceived that so impetuous a man might when first coming forward decidedly combat such a measure and then, indignant at the resistance which he encountered, propose it himself.  The measure against the insolvency of senators was doubtless called forth by the exposure of the economic condition of the ruling families—­so