societies of -publicani- thus coincided as regards their chiefs, we can all the better understand the significance of the counter-senate thus constituted.  The substantial effect of this was, that, while hitherto there had been only two authorities in the state—­the government as the administering and controlling, and the burgesses as the legislative, authority—­and the courts had been divided between them, now the moneyed aristocracy was not only united into a compact and privileged class on the solid basis of material interests, but also, as a judicial and controlling power, formed part of the state and took its place almost on a footing of equality by the side of the ruling aristocracy.  All the old antipathies of the merchants against the nobility could not but thenceforth find only too practical an expression in the sentences of the jurymen; above all, when the provincial governors were called to a reckoning, the senator had to await a decision involving his civic existence at the hands no longer as formerly of his peers, but of great merchants and bankers.  The feuds between the Roman capitalists and the Roman governors were transplanted from the provincial administration to the dangerous field of these processes of reckoning.  Not only was the aristocracy of the rich divided, but care was taken that the variance should always find fresh nourishment and easy expression.

Monarchical Government Substituted for That of the Senate

With his weapons—­the proletariate and the mercantile class—­thus prepared, Gracchus set about his main work, the overthrow of the ruling aristocracy.  The overthrow of the senate meant, on the one hand, the depriving it of its essential functions by legislative alterations; and on the other hand, the ruining of the existing aristocracy by measures of a more personal and transient kind.  Gracchus did both.  The function of administration, in particular, had hitherto belonged exclusively to the senate; Gracchus took it away, partly by settling the most important administrative questions by means of comitial laws or, in other words, practically through tribunician dictation, partly by restricting the senate as much as possible in current affairs, partly by taking business after the most comprehensive fashion into his own hands.  The measures of the former kind have been mentioned already:  the new master of the state without consulting the senate dealt with the state-chest, by imposing a permanent and oppressive burden on the public finances in the distribution of corn; dealt with the domains, by sending out colonies not as hitherto by decree of the senate and people, but by decree of the people alone; and dealt with the provincial administration, by overturning through a law of the people the financial constitution given by the senate to the province of Asia and substituting for it one altogether different.  One of the most important of the current duties of the senate—­that of fixing at its pleasure the functions for the time