Scipio did not scorn the honours of a triumph, and the victory of Numantia was followed by the usual pageant in the streets.[448] He was unquestionably the foremost man of Rome, and senate and commons hung on his lips to catch some definite expression of his attitude to recent events, or to those which were stirring men's minds in the present. They had not long to wait, for a test was soon presented. When in 131 Carbo introduced his bill permitting re-election to the tribunate, all the resources of Scipio's dignified oratory were at the disposal of the senate, and the coalition of his admirers with the voters whom the senate could dispose of, was fatal to the chances of the bill.[449] Such an attitude need not have weakened his popularity; for excellent reasons could be given, in the interest of popular government itself, against permitting any magistracy to become continuous, But his political enemies were on the watch, and in one of the debates on the measure care was taken that a question should be put, the answer to which must either identify or compromise him with the new radicalism. Carbo asked him what he thought about the death of Tiberius Gracchus. Scipio's answer was cautious but precise; "If Gracchus had formed the intention of seizing on the administration of the State, he had been justly slain." It was merely a restatement of the old constitutional theory that one who aimed at monarchy was by that very fact an outlaw. But the answer, hypothetical as was its expression, implied a suspicion of Gracchus's aims. It did not please the crowd; there was a roar of dissent. Then Scipio lost his temper. The contempt of the soldier for the civilian, of the Roman for the foreigner, of the man of pure for the man of mixed blood--a contempt inflamed to passion by the thought that men such as he were often at the mercy of these wretches--broke through all reserve. "I have never been frightened by the clamour of the enemy in arms," he shouted, "shall I be alarmed by your cries, ye step-sons of Italy?" This reflection on the lineage of his audience naturally aroused another protest. It was met by the sharp rejoinder, "I brought you in chains to Rome; you are freed now, but none the more terrible for that!" [450] It was a humiliating spectacle. The most respected man in Rome was using the vulgar abuse of the streets to the sovereign people; and the man who used this language was so blinded by prejudice as not to see that the blood which he reviled gave the promise of a new race, that the mob which faced him was not a crowd of Italian peasants, willing victims of the martinet, that the Asiatic and the Greek, with their sordid clothes and doubtful occupations, possessed more intelligence than the Roman members of the Scipionic circle and might one day be the rulers of Rome. The new race was one of infinite possibilities. It needed guidance, not abuse. Carbo and his friends must have been delighted with the issue of their experiment.