On the following day Gracchus announced that the question of deposition would be taken first, and a fresh and equally vain appeal was made to the feelings of the unshaken Octavius.[369] The question was then put, not as a vague and general resolution, but as a determinate motion that Octavius be deprived of the tribunate. The thirty-five tribes voted, and when the votes of seventeen had been handed up and proclaimed,[370] and the voice of but one was Lacking to make Octavius a private citizen, Tiberius as the presiding tribune stopped for a moment the machinery of the election. He again showed himself as a revolutionist unfortunate in the possession of a political and personal conscience. The people were witnessing a more passionate scene than ever, one that may appear as the last effort of reconciliation between the two social forces that were to meet in terrible conflict. Gracchus's arms were round his opponent's neck; broken appeals fell from his lips--the old one that he should not break the heart of the people: the new one that he should not cause his own degradation, and leave a bitter memory in the mind of the author of his fall. Observers saw that Octavius's heart was touched; his eyes were filled with tears, and for some time he kept a troubled silence. But he soon remembered his duty and his pledge. Tiberius might do with him what he would. Gracchus called the gods to witness that he would willingly have saved his colleague from dishonour, and ordered the resumption of the announcement of the votes. The bill became law and Octavius was stripped of his office. It was probably because he declined to recognise the legality of the act that he still lingered on the Rostra. One of the tribunician _viatores_, a freedman of Gracchus, was commanded to fetch him down. When he reached the ground, a rush was made at him by the mob; but his supporters rallied round him, and Tiberius himself rushed from the Rostra to prevent the act of violence. Soon he was lost in the crowd and hurried unobserved from the tumult.[371] His place in the tribunician college was filled up by the immediate election of one Quintus Mummius.[372]