consulship of Carbo.[759] The chief magistrate spoke warmly in defence of his accused predecessor in office, and declared that the action of Opimius in succouring his country was an act incumbent on the consul as the recognised guardian of the State.[760] No man had greater reason to feel secure than Carbo, who had so lately tested the suffrages of the people as electors and as judges; yet no man was in greater peril. It seems that, while exposed on the side of his former associates to the impotent rage which is excited by the success of the convert, who is believed to have been rewarded for his treachery, he had not won the confidence, or at least could not arouse the whole-hearted support, of his new associates and their following in the assembly. Perhaps the landlords had not forgiven the agrarian commissioner, nor the moderates the vehement opponent of Scipio; to the senate he had served his purpose, and they may not have thought him serviceable enough to deserve the effort which had rescued Opimius. Carbo was, in fact, an inviting object of attack for any young political adventurer who wished to inaugurate his career by the overthrow of a distinguished political victim, and to sound a note of liberalism which should not grate too harshly in the ears of men of moderate views. The assailant was Lucius Crassus,[761] destined to be the greatest orator of his day, and a youth now burning to test his eloquence in the greatest field afforded by the public life of Rome, but scrupulous enough to take no unfair advantage of the object of his attack.[762] We do not know the nature of the charge on which Carbo was arraigned. It probably came under the expansive conception of treason, and was possibly connected with those very proceedings in consequence of which Opimius had been accused and acquitted.[763] That the charge was of a character that had reference to recent political events, or at least that the prosecutor felt himself bound to maintain some distinct political principle of a liberal kind, is proved by the regret which Crassus expressed in his maturer years that the impetus of youth had led him to take a step which limited his freedom of action for the future.[764] Some compunction may also have been stirred by the unexpected consequence of his attack; for Carbo, perhaps realising the animosity of his judges and the weakness or coldness of his friends, is said to have put an end to his life by poison.[765] Voluntary exile always lay open to the Roman who dared not face the final verdict; and the suicide of Carbo cannot be held to have been the sole refuge of despair; it is rather a sign of the bitterness greater than that of death, which may fall on the soul of a man who can appeal for sympathy to none, who knows that he has been abandoned and believes that he has been betrayed. The hostility of his countrymen pursued him beyond the grave; the aristocratic historian could not forget the seditious tribune, and the contemporary chronicles which