[Sidenote:  Story of his mother’s sentiments.] It is far more likely that when in his stirring speeches he spoke of his home as no place for him to visit, while his mother was weeping and in despair, he was influenced by her adjurations to avenge his brother, and not by any craven warnings against sharing his fate.  However this may have been, no timid influences could be traced in the fiery passion of his first speeches. [Sidenote:  Story of the means by which he modulated his voice when speaking.] He was, in fact, so carried away by his feelings that he had to resort to a curious device in order to keep his voice under control.  A man with a musical instrument used, it is said, to stand near him, and warn him by a note at times if he was pitching his voice too high or too low.  It was now that he told his stories of the flogging of the magistrate of Teanum and the murder of the Venusian herdsman, and we can imagine how they would incense his hearers against the nobles.  Against one of them, Octavius, he specially directed a law, making it illegal for any magistrate previously deposed by the people to be elected to office; but this, at Cornelia’s suggestion it is said, he withdrew.  Another law also had special reference to the fate of Tiberius.  It made illegal the trial of any citizen for an offence which involved the loss of his civic rights without the consent of the people. [Sidenote:  Caius procures the banishment of Popillius Laenas.] This law, if in force, would have prevented the ferocity with which Popillius Laenas hunted down the partisans of Tiberius; and Caius followed it up according to the oration De Domo, by procuring against Popillius a sentence of outlawry.  One of the fragments from his speeches was probably spoken at this time.  In it he told the people that they now had the chance they had so long and so passionately desired; and that, if they did not avail themselves of it, they would lay themselves open to the charge of caprice or of ungoverned temper.  Popillius anticipated the sentence by voluntary retirement from Rome.

[Sidenote:  His Lex Frumentaria.] Having satisfied his conscience by the performance of what no doubt seemed to him sacred duties, Caius at once set to work to build up his new constitution.  It is commonly represented that in order to gain over the people to his side he cynically bribed them by his Lex Frumentaria.  Now if this were true, and Caius were as clear-sighted as the same writers who insist on the badness of the law describe him to have been, it is hard to see how they can in the same breath eulogise his goodness and nobleness.  To gain his ends he would have been using vile means, and would have been a vile man. [Sidenote:  The common criticism on it unjust.] Looking, however, more closely into the law, we are led to doubt whether it was bad, or, at all events, even granting that eventually it led to evil, whether it would have appeared likely to do so to Caius.  The public land, it must be remembered, was liable