To give the senate a permanent infusion of new blood would be simply to strengthen its authority, while completely cutting away the links which bound the new members to their original class. Even the swamping of the existing body by a two-thirds majority of new members would have been transitory in its effects. The new member of the Curia would soon have shed his old equestrian views and assumed the outlook of his older peers. It might indeed have been possible to devise a system by which the senate would, at the recurring intervals of the _lustra_, have been filled up in equal proportions from ex-magistrates and knights: and in this way a constant supply of middle-class sentiment might have been furnished to the governing body. But even this scheme would have secured to the elected a life-long tenure of power, and this was a fatal obstacle both to the intentions of the reformer and the aspirations of the equestrian order. While the former desired a balance of power, the latter wished that the interests of their class should be enforced by its genuine representatives. Both knew that a participation in the executive power was immaterial, and that all that was needed might be gained by the possession of judicial authority alone. Gracchus's final decision, therefore, was to create a wholly new panel of _judices_ which should be made up exclusively from the members of the titular class of knights.[624] It was not necessary or desirable that the judiciary law should make any mention of a class, or employ the courtesy title of _equites_ to designate the new judges. The effect might be less invidiously secured by demanding qualifications which were practically identical with the social conditions requisite for the possession of titular knighthood. One of the determining factors was a property qualification, and this was possibly placed at the modest total of four hundred thousand sesterces.[625] This was the amount of capital which seems at this period to have given its possessor the right of serving on horseback in the army and therefore the claim to the title of _eques_, but it was a sum that did not convey alarming suggestions of government by millionaires, but rather pointed to the upper middle class as the fittest depositaries of judicial power. Not only were magistrates and ex-magistrates excluded from the Bench, but the disqualification extended to the fathers, brothers and sons of magistrates and of past or present senators. The ostensible purpose of these provisions was doubtless to ensure that the selected jurors should be bound by no tie of kindred to the individuals who would appear before their judgment seat; but they must have had the effect of excluding from the new panel many of the true knights belonging to the eighteen centuries; for this select corps was largely composed of members of the noble families. A similar effect would have been produced by the age qualification. The