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The Contio had given way to the Comitia, the people had been ready to divide, and Gracchus had ordered his scribe to read aloud the words of the bill. Octavius had bidden the scribe to be silent; the vast meeting had melted away, and all the labours of the reformer seemed to have been in vain.
The turmoil had quieted down with the exclusion of the more violent members of the opposition. Gracchus had called a Contio, for the purpose, it was said, of encouraging his supporters and asserting his own constancy and defiance of senatorial authority.
It seems that the consul Opimius himself, although he could not preside at the final meeting of the assembly, which was purely plebeian, was about to hold a Contio or to speak at one summoned by the tribunes. Gracchus himself did not immediately enter the area in which the meeting was to be held, but paced the portico of the temple buried in his thoughts.
They could applaud or hiss the speakers in the informal gatherings of the Contio; it was not impossible that in the last resort they might lend physical aid to that section of the democrats which had advocated their cause. It might even have been possible to manufacture votes for some of these immigrants.
The eagerly awaited day arrived, on which the scandal-loving ears of the people were to be filled to the full with the iniquities of their rulers, on which their long-cherished suspicions should be changed to a pleasantly anticipated certainty. Memmius summoned his Contio and produced the king. Even the suppliant garb of Jugurtha did not save him from a howl of execration.
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