Yet Roman sentiment would have declared that there were times when the decree and its consequences were justified. Force can only be met by force, and a gathering such as Catiline’s army in Etruria was a fair object of attack by the executive authorities; but sentiment would not have allowed the execution without appeal of a few prisoners captured within the city, however grave the danger. A state of war must be recognised, but there was no power in the Roman state that could declare martial law and execute its consequences. The exercise of this unprecedented power evoked a vigorous protest from the true government, the people.[1348] The plebiscite passed by the younger Gracchus was aimed more directly at the magistrates, and it improved on the Valerian laws by enacting “that no _judicium_ should be exercised on the _caput_ of a Roman citizen without the consent of the people.”[1349] But it is possible that it made senators individually responsible for the decree authorising such conduct on the part of the magistrates,[1350] and it is almost certain that it abrogated a clause in the law of the Twelve Tables by declaring that the Plebs might exercise capital jurisdiction against a magistrate guilty of violating the provisions of the measure.[1351] Henceforth there could be no question of the illegality of the _ultimum senatus consultum_, for Cicero’s quibble that the Gracchan law only protected the lives of _cives_, and that individuals specified by the Senate had been declared _hostes_,[1352] is an argument in a circle. It is this latter possibility which the Gracchan law denied; and though common sense might interpret certain overt acts as a sign of war against society, no degree of treason could _ipso jure_ make a citizen into an enemy unless that treason had been proved in a court of law.