[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 to an impost called vectigal.
This vectigal went into the Aerarium, which the nobles had at their
disposal. Now the law of Caius appears to have fixed a nominal price
for corn to all Roman citizens, and if the market price was above this
price the difference would have to be made good from the Aerarium. We
at once see the object of Caius, and how the justice of it might have
blinded him to the demoralising effects of his measure. 'The public
land,' he said in effect, 'belongs to all Romans and so does the
vectigal. If you take that to which you have no right, you shall give
it back again in cheap corn.' In short, it was a clever device for
partially neutralising the long misappropriation of the State's
property by the nobles, and for giving to the people what belonged
to the people--to each man, as it were, so many ears of corn from
whatever fraction would be his own share of the land. [Sidenote:
Contrast between the just proposal of Caius and the demagogy of
Drusus.] When Drusus was afterwards set up to outbid Caius, he