but limits were put to the right of counter-plea, and—­what was perhaps still more important—­the liberty of speech in the courts was done away; for both the number of the advocates and the time of speaking apportioned to each were restricted by fixing a maximum, and the bad habit which had prevailed of adducing, in addition to the witnesses as to facts, witnesses to character or -laudatores-, as they were called, in favour of the accused was prohibited.  The obsequious senate further decreed on the suggestion of Pompeius that the country had been placed in peril by the quarrel on the Appian Way; accordingly a special commission was appointed by an exceptional law for all crimes connected with it, the members of which were directly nominated by Pompeius.  An attempt was also made to give once more a serious importance to the office of the censors, and by that agency to purge the deeply disordered burgess-body of the worst rabble.

All these measures were adopted under the pressure of the sword.  In consequence of the declaration of the senate that the country was in danger, Pompeius called the men capable of service throughout Italy to arms and made them swear allegiance for all contingencies; an adequate and trustworthy corps was temporarily stationed at the Capitol; at every stirring of opposition Pompeius threatened armed intervention, and during the proceedings at the trial respecting the murder of Clodius stationed contrary to all precedent, a guard over the place of trial itself.

Humiliation of the Republicans

The scheme for the revival of the censorship failed, because among the servile majority of the senate no one possessed sufficient moral courage and authority even to become a candidate for such an office.  On the other hand Milo was condemned by the jurymen (8 April 702) and Cato’s candidature for the consulship of 703was frustrated.  The opposition of speeches and pamphlets received through the new judicial ordinance a blow from which it never recovered; the dreaded forensic eloquence was thereby driven from the field of politics, and thenceforth felt the restraints of monarchy.  Opposition of course had not disappeared either from the minds of the great majority of the nation or even wholly from public life—­to effect that end the popular elections, the jury-courts, and literature must have been not merely restricted, but annihilated.  Indeed, in these very transactions themselves, Pompeius by his unskilfulness and perversity helped the republicans to gain even under his dictatorship several triumphs which he severely felt.  The special measures, which the rulers took to strengthen their power, were of course officially characterized as enactments made in the interest of public tranquillity and order, and every burgess, who did not desire anarchy, was described as substantially concurring in them.  But Pompeius pushed this transparent fiction so far, that instead of putting safe instruments into the