pronounce the capital sentence against the magistrate who had violated the prescriptions of his law. But, although the magistrate was the chief, he appears not to have been the sole offender under the provisions of this bill. In spite of the fact that the senate as a whole was incapable of being punished for the advice which had prompted the magistrate to an illegal course of action, it seems that the individual senator who moved, or perhaps supported, the decree which led to the forbidden jurisdiction, was made liable to the penalties of the law.[595] The operation of the enactment was made retrospective, or was perhaps conceived by its very nature to cover the past abuses which had called it into being; for in a sense it created no new crime, but simply restated the principle of the appeal in a form suited to the proceedings against which it wished to guard. It might have been argued that customary law protected the consul who directed the proceedings of the court which doomed the supporters of Tiberius Gracchus; but the argument, if used, was of no avail. Popillius was to be the witness to all men of the reality of this reassertion of the palladium of Roman liberty. An impeachment was framed against him, and either before or after his withdrawal from Rome, Caius Gracchus himself formulated and carried through the Plebs the bill of interdiction which doomed him to exile.[596] It was in vain that Popillius's young sons and numerous relatives besought the people for mercy.[597] The memory of the outrage was too recent, the joyful sense of the power of retaliation too novel and too strong. All that was possible was a counter demonstration which should emphasise the sympathy of loyalists with the illustrious victim, and Popillius was escorted to the gates by a weeping crowd.[598] We know that condemnation also overtook his colleague Rupilius,[599] and it is probable that he too fell a victim to the sense of vengeance or of justice aroused by the Gracchan law.