Luca, and Lucius Domitius, the only candidate of the opposition who persevered was set aside; but this had been effected only by open violence, on which occasion Cato was wounded and other extremely scandalous incidents occurred.  In the next consular elections for 700, in spite of all the exertions of the regents, Domitius was actually elected, and Cato likewise now prevailed in the candidature for the praetorship, in which to the scandal of the whole burgesses Caesar’s client Vatinius had during the previous year beaten him off the field.  At the elections for 701 the opposition succeeded in so indisputably convicting the candidates of the regents, along with others, of the most shameful electioneering intrigues that the regents, on whom the scandal recoiled, could not do otherwise than abandon them.  These repeated and severe defeats of the dynasts on the battle-field of the elections may be traceable in part to the unmanageableness of the rusty machinery, to the incalculable accidents of the polling, to the opposition at heart of the middle classes, to the various private considerations that interfere in such cases and often strangely clash with those of party; but the main cause lies elsewhere.  The elections were at this time essentially in the power of the different clubs into which the aristocracy had grouped themselves; the system of bribery was organized by them on the most extensive scale and with the utmost method.  The same aristocracy therefore, which was represented in the senate, ruled also the elections; but while in the senate it yielded with a grudge, it worked and voted here—­in secret and secure from all reckoning—­absolutely against the regents.  That the influence of the nobility in this field was by no means broken by the strict penal law against the electioneering intrigues of the clubs, which Crassus when consul in 699 caused to be confirmed by the burgesses, is self-evident, and is shown by the elections of the succeeding years.

And in the Courts

The jury-courts occasioned equally great difficulty to the regents.  As they were then composed, while the senatorial nobility was here also influential, the decisive voice lay chiefly with the middle class.  The fixing of a high-rated census for jurymen by a law proposed by Pompeius in 699 is a remarkable proof that the opposition to the regents had its chief seat in the middle class properly so called, and that the great capitalists showed themselves here, as everywhere, more compliant than the latter.  Nevertheless the republican party was not yet deprived of all hold in the courts, and it was never weary of directing political impeachments, not indeed against the regents themselves, but against their prominent instruments.  This warfare of prosecutions was waged the more keenly, that according to usage the duty of accusation belonged to the senatorial youth, and, as may readily be conceived, there was more of republican passion, fresh talent, and bold delight in attack to be found among these