appointed, cannot be said to have added anything to the efficiency of provincial administration. It may even be regarded as a retrograde step, as the commencement of that system of routine in provincial appointments, which regarded proved capacity for the government and defence of the subjects of Rome as the last qualification necessary for foreign command. The senate in its award may often have been swayed by unworthy motives; but it was sometimes moved by patriotic fears. Of the two consuls it might send the one of tried military ability to a province threatened by war and dismiss the mere politician to a peaceful district. But now, without any regard to present conditions or future contingencies, it was forced to assign departments to men whose very names were unknown. The people, in the exercise of their elective power, were acting almost as blindly as the senate; for the issues of a Roman election were often so ill-defined, its cross-currents, due to personal influence and the power of the canvass, so strong and perplexing, that it was rarely possible to predict the issue of the poll. On the other hand, if there was a candidate so eminent that his return could be predicted as a certainty, the senate might assign some insignificant spheres of administration as the provinces of the future consuls; and thus, in the one case where the decision might be influenced by knowledge and reason, the Gracchan law was liable to defeat its own ends. A further weakness of the enactment, from the point of view of efficiency, was that it made no attempt to alter the mode in which the designated provinces were to be occupied by their claimants. If the consuls could not come to an agreement as to which _provincia_ each should hold, the chance of the lot still decided a question on which the future fortunes of the empire might turn.