On the side of Gracchus were many of the most eminent men, who certainly were owners of large estates as well as the Scipios, but who gave up their private advantage for the common good. There was even his father-in-law Appius Claudius, who in other respects was just as proud as any of his forefathers, but who in this behaved as Appius Claudius Cæcus had done in his most glorious moments; moreover, there was the great P. Mucius Scævola who was then consul; there was also the father-in-law of his brother, P. Licinius Crassus, and others. The rage which broke out against Tib. Gracchus in the senate, is difficult to describe; it went beyond all the bounds of decency. Men of rank, when they are the champions of oligarchy, as soon as ever their interests are touched, not only display the same greedy covetousness as the worst bred, but likewise a fury which one could hardly have believed. Hitherto no one had lost sight of what was due to Gracchus and his family: he enjoyed the same respect among the Romans, as among barbarians; every one acknowledged his virtue, and even those who looked upon all virtue as folly, were forced to own that he was afflicted with that folly. But now the heroes of triumphs, and the first men of the state, railed against him as a mutinous fellow who was actuated by the most detestable motives. P. Cornelius Nasica, he who was grandson of him who in the war with Hannibal had been declared to be the most virtuous of men; and son of Scipio Nasica, who was likewise said to have been an example to the whole nation, and who had tried hard to bring back the good ways of the olden time; a man who himself also was deemed to be the very soul of honour, and perhaps deserved to be so in many respects--became hand and glove with the infamous Q. Pompeius. From this it does not follow that he was a knave; it may be that, hardened in his oligarchical notions, he really saw Ti. Gracchus as he fancied him to be. The senate did not possess the same means which the patricians once had against the plebeians: it had not the old negative of the curies, the Hortensian law having conceded to the tribes the most unbounded power of legislation, so that the senate could not step in with a senatus consultum. By the strangest anomaly, the tribunes could now only check each other, since there was no veto where it would have been most needed: the only means of defeating a law was the intercession of a tribune.