power, brought to trial in 677 one of the most respected partisans of Sulla the consular Gnaeus Dolabella, and in the following year another Sullan officer Gaius Antonius; and Marcus Cicero in 684 called to account Gaius Verres, one of the most wretched of the creatures of Sulla, and one of the worst scourges of the provincials.  Again and again were the pictures of that dark period of the proscriptions, the fearful sufferings of the provincials, the disgraceful state of Roman criminal justice, unfolded before the assembled multitude with all the pomp of Italian rhetoric, and with all the bitterness of Italian sarcasm, and the mighty dead as well as his living instruments were unrelentingly exposed to their wrath and scorn.  The re-establishment of the full tribunician power, with the continuance of which the freedom, might, and prosperity of the republic seemed bound up as by a charm of primeval sacredness, the reintroduction of the “stern” equestrian tribunals, the renewal of the censorship, which Sulla had set aside, for the purifying of the supreme governing board from its corrupt and pernicious elements, were daily demanded with a loud voice by the orators of the popular party.

Want of Results from the Democratic Agitation

But with all this no progress was made.  There was scandal and outcry enough, but no real result was attained by this exposure of the government according to and beyond its deserts.  The material power still lay, so long as there was no military interference, in the hands of the burgesses of the capital; and the “people” that thronged the streets of Rome and made magistrates and laws in the Forum, was in fact nowise better than the governing senate.  The government no doubt had to come to terms with the multitude, where its own immediate interest was at stake; this was the reason for the renewal of the Sempronian corn-law.  But it was not to be imagined that this populace would have displayed earnestness on behalf of an idea or even of a judicious reform.  What Demosthenes said of his Athenians was justly applied to the Romans of this period—­the people were very zealous for action, so long as they stood round the platform and listened to proposals of reforms; but when they went home, no one thought further of what he had heard in the market-place.  However those democratic agitators might stir the fire, it was to no purpose, for the inflammable material was wanting.  The government knew this, and allowed no sort of concession to be wrung from it on important questions of principle; at the utmost it consented (about 682) to grant amnesty to a portion of those who had become exiles with Lepidus.  Any concessions that did take place, came not so much from the pressure of the democracy as from the attempts at mediation of the moderate aristocracy.  But of the two laws which the single still surviving leader of this section Gaius Cotta carried in his consulate of 679, that which concerned the tribunals was again set aside in the very next year; and the second, which abolished the Sullan enactment that those who had held the tribunate should be disqualified for undertaking other magistracies, but allowed the other limitations to continue, merely—­like every half-measure—­excited the displeasure of both parties.