His first move had for its object the elimination of Cicero as prosecutor. The Roman law, though it allowed anyone to constitute himself accuser of a citizen who had violated the laws, did not permit an unlimited number of people to get up and accuse a single individual. For, in that case, the law would have worked oppressively, cruelly, and unconscionably. The accusation had to be lodged by a single person; and if several persons asked to be allowed to accuse an individual, it was the duty of the authority to choose one of them as the accuser. Verres accordingly tried to find a rival for Cicero. A certain Quintus Cecilius Negro, a Roman citizen, but of Sicilian origin and a Hebrew by religion, who had been Verres’s quæstor in Sicily, appeared before the Prætor, declaring that he wished to prosecute Verres, and demanding the privilege over Cicero on the pretext that he had been insulted by Verres in Sicily. As a matter of fact, there had been a violent quarrel between them about a certain Agonis, a freedwoman of the temple of Venus at Eryx, who practised the profession reserved in the ancient world for the slaves of the temples of Venus. So a preliminary trial was necessary to decide which should be the accuser, Cecilius or Cicero, and this trial took place in the early months of the year 70. Cicero made a powerful speech in which he clearly insinuated that Cecilius was playing a part with the connivance of Verres; that the former, if he were chosen to be the accuser, would conduct the prosecution in the way best calculated to secure Verres’s acquittal. He added in more precise terms that the case was of the greatest political importance, inasmuch as it was bound to prove definitely to the provinces whether there was or was not justice to be had in Rome; whether the subjects of Rome might expect to find their rights impartially defended in the courts of the Republic, or whether—as the enemies of Rome and the adversaries of the dominant party were repeating on all sides—the aristocracy were nothing but a corrupt and rapacious association without bowels of mercy for the victims whom they tortured. Cicero was successful in this first skirmish. He obtained recognition from the court as the prosecutor of Verres, and was granted one hundred and ten days in which to proceed to Sicily to collect the proofs of his accusation. He started at once. At Rome, the struggle between the party with the purse and the Democratic opposition, encouraged by the support of the two all-powerful Consuls, waxed furious. Pompey and Crassus induced the Senate to restore to the Tribunes their ancient powers. They re-established the censorship and by the instrumentality of the two newly elected Censors, they ejected from the Senate many of the more contemptible of Sulla’s partisans. Marcus Aurelius Cotta proposed a reform of the courts which would have removed the latter almost entirely from the influence of the dominant party.