retained their veto, but a penalty was attached to the abuse of the veto,
the Senate being the judge in its own cause, and possessing a right to
depose a tribune.

In the Senate so reconstituted was thus centred a complete restrictive
control over the legislation and the administration. And this was not all.
The senators had been so corrupt in the use of their judicial functions
that Gracchus had disabled them from sitting in the law courts, and had
provided that the judges should be chosen in future from the equites. The
knights had been exceptionally pure in their office. Cicero challenged his
opponents on the trial of Verres[5] to find a single instance in which an
equestrian court could be found to have given a corrupt verdict during the
forty years for which their privilege survived. But their purity did not
save them, nor, alas! those who were to suffer by a reversion to the old
order. The equestrian courts were abolished: the senatorial courts were
reinstated. It might be hoped that the senators had profited by their
lesson, and for the future would be careful of their reputation.

Changes were made also in the modes of election to office. The College of
Priests had been originally a close corporation, which filled up its own
numbers. Democracy had thrown it open to competition, and given the choice
to the people. Sylla reverted to the old rule. Consuls like Marius and
Cinna, who had the confidence of the people, had been re-elected year
after year, and had been virtual kings. Sylla provided that ten years must
elapse between a first consulship and a second. Nor was any one to be a
consul who was not forty-three years old and had not passed already
through the lower senatorial offices of praetor or quaestor.

The assembly of the people had been shorn of its legislative powers. There
was no longer, therefore, any excuse for its meeting, save on special