The day of the election arrived and the votes were taken. When they came to be read out, it was found that the two first tribes had given their voice for Gracchus. Then there was a sudden uproar. The votes were going against the landlords; a legal protest must be made. Men rose in the assembly, and shouted out that immediate re-election to the tribunate was forbidden by the law. They were probably both right and wrong in their protest, as men so often were who ventured to make a definite assertion about the fluid public law of Rome. There was apparently no enactment forbidding the iteration of this office, and appointment to the tribunate must have been governed by custom. But recent custom seems to have been emphatically opposed to immediate re-election, and the appeal was justified on grounds of public practice.[403] It would probably have been disregarded, had the Gracchan supporters been in an overwhelming majority, or Gracchus's colleagues unanimous in their support. But the people were divided, and the president was not enthusiastic enough in the cause to risk his future impeachment. Rubrius, to whom the lot had assigned the conduct of the proceedings on that day, hesitated as to the course which he ought to follow. A bolder spirit Mummius, the man who had been made by the deposition of Octavius, asked that the conduct of the assembly should be handed over to him. Rubrius, glad to escape the difficulty, willingly yielded his place; but now the other members of the college interposed. The forms of the Comitia were being violated; a president could not be chosen without the use of the lot. The resignation of Rubrius must be followed by another appeal to sortition. The point of order raised, as usual, a heated discussion; the tribunes gathered on the Rostra to argue the matter out. Nothing could be gained by keeping the people as the spectators of such a scene, and Gracchus succeeded in getting the proceedings adjourned to the following day.[404] The situation was becoming more desperate; for each delay was a triumph for the opposition, and could only strengthen the belief in the illegality of Gracchus's claim. He now resorted to the last device of the Roman; he ceased to be a protector and became a suppliant. Although still a magistrate, he assumed the garb of mourning, and with humbled and tearful mien begged the help of individuals in the market place.[405]