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The equites were not only left in possession of the tribunals, but their power as jurymen was considerably increased, partly by a stricter ordinance regarding the standing commission especially important to the merchants as to extortions on the part of the public magistrates in the provinces, which Glaucia carried probably in this year, partly by the special tribunal, appointed doubtless as early as 651 on the proposal of Saturninus, respecting the embezzlements and other official malversations that had occurred during the Cimbrian movement in Gaul.
At the temple of Tellus, where the Esquiline begins to slope towards the great Forum, Marius attempted once more to make a stand; he adjured the senate and equites and all the citizens to throw themselves across the path of the legions. But he himself had transformed them from citizens to mercenaries; his own work turned against him: they obeyed not the government, but their general.
He had excited a tumult against the conqueror of Numidia, Quintus Metellus, when he was a candidate for the censorship in 652, and kept him besieged in the Capitol till the equites liberated him not without bloodshed; the retaliatory measure of the censor Metellus the expulsion with infamy of Saturninus and of Glaucia from the senate on occasion of the revision of the senatorial roll had only miscarried through the remissness of the colleague assigned to Metellus.
And so those ties which have been broken will be restored, and ours which have been so religiously preserved will retain all their old inviolability. At Rome I find politics in a shaky condition; everything is unsatisfactory and foreboding change. For I have no doubt you have been told that our friends, the equites, are all but alienated from the senate.
Another thing also gained him the good-will of the many in no small degree, for the people were delighted at his being reviewed among the Equites after the triumph. XV. Sulla was annoyed to see to what a height of reputation and power Pompeius was advancing, but as he was ashamed to attempt to check his career he kept quiet.
In spite of their concord in opposing a common foe such as was Tiberius Gracchus, a deep gulf lay between the nobility and the moneyed aristocracy; and Gaius, more adroit than his brother, enlarged it till the alliance was broken up and the mercantile class ranged itself on his side. Insignia of the Equites
Pompeius triumphed B.C. 81, or in the beginning of 80 B.C., the first of the class of Equites who ever had this honour. Compare Life of Tib. The events of the consulship of Lepidus are very confused. As to the death of Perperna, see the Life of Sertorius, c. 26.
In the present epoch the mercantile aristocracy began, under the name of the -equites-, to exercise a decisive influence in political affairs.
No doubt it conferred popularity on Caius, and no doubt his popularity was acceptable to him; but there is no ground for believing that his noble nature deliberately stooped to demoralise the mob for selfish motives. The Lex Judiciaria gained over the equites also. It has been before explained that the equites at this time were non-senatorial rich men.
At the temple of Tellus, where the Esquiline begins to slope towards the great Forum, Marius attempted once more to make a stand; he adjured the senate and equites and all the citizens to throw themselves across the path of the legions. But he himself had transformed them from citizens to mercenaries; his own work turned against him: they obeyed not the government, but their general.
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