believed that the Assembly could be trusted to give a hearty and
consistent support to a popular leader who could and would shew
it the way to recover and assert its sovran power. The sequel
proved his error. Selfishness indifference and corruption had
already destroyed the once solid patriotism of Roman Assemblies:
the non-attendance of rural voters generally made them unfit to
express public opinion: even those present did not decide by a
total majority, but by the majorities, however small, in not less
than 18 of the 35 Tribes. Thus the power at which Gracchus,
consciously or unconsciously, aimed was that of a popular leader
in a Greek Demos; and there was nothing like a Greek Demos
in Rome. But the rule of the Senate was to him unbearable,
and he set to work at once. The judicial commission that sat
after the murder of Tiberius, and put to death or outlawed his
adherents, was appointed by the Senate. The Senate itself could
not act as a court of justice. Therefore this act was one more
encroachment on the Assembly's sovran power, and must not be
passed over. The act of the court was strictly the act of its
president. Gracchus then carried a law declaring illegal any
sentence affecting the bodily or civil life (caput) of any citizen,
passed without the leave of the Assembly, and he made it
retrospective. Under this law P. Popilius Laenas, who had
presided in the special court, was clearly guilty. Gracchus then
denounced Popilius before the Assembly, and got him outlawed
in the regular form. This Sempronian law in fact revived the
old popular jurisdiction, chiefly in order to ruin an obnoxious
individual.

335. It was plain that the leading tribune had the complete
mastery of his nine colleagues, and that he was for the present
the ruler of the Assembly, controlling the legislative power. The
only thing to be done was to let him alone and to wait. But he,
with great and growing designs, could not have too much popular
support, and therefore it was probably now that he produced and
carried his famous corn-law. The state was to buy corn, and to
retail it to citizens in Rome at half the cost-price. That is, an
expedient hitherto used for temporary relief in time of dearth
was to be henceforth a regular system of poor-relief. That the
treasury would be sadly crippled by such a burden was obvious.
We are told that Gracchus posed as a guardian of the treasury.
By what sophistry he justified the corn-law on economic grounds

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