The unlucky honour of the consulship devolved, the next year, on C. Flaminius, a man, whose name has come down to us with disgrace, though, as far as we can judge from his actions, unjustly. He had, when a tribune, carried through the assignment of the _Ager Gallicus Picenus_, for which the nobles never forgave him; he now, as consul, supported a tribunician law which also gave high offence, and was a remarkable instance of the hypocrisy of the nobility. The aristocracy always rail against trade, business, and so forth, and talk of noble feeling and high-mindedness; and yet, they will not let an advantage slip out of their hands. The new law decreed, that no senator, and no one, whose father had a seat in the senate, should own a sea-going ship of more than a certain tonnage, nor for any other purpose than to convey corn from his estates to Rome; and it therefore debarred the nobility from making money by traffic, and restricted them to what they got from their landed property. Commerce, shipping, and such things, were to be left to the trading class which had now risen, the _equites_, and the senators were not to interfere with them. Nothing indeed could have been more in the spirit of the Venetian aristocracy in the best times, than such a law; but the grasping nobility of Rome felt so much aggrieved by its operation, that Flaminius was spoken of as a turbulent fellow. Flaminius may have been a rash and hot-headed man; yet I am convinced that he was any thing but a revolutionist. In the same spirit, he was also now decried for having made too much haste, because he had set out for Ariminum, without waiting for the Feriæ Latinæ! Such an accusation is quite unbearable; for it is plain that Hannibal had not waited for the end of the Latin holidays. Flaminius in fact still came too late.