the plebs, prevented his colleagues from causing further annoyance to the great man. The general circumstances indicate that the trial was to take place before the tribes, and that the penalty in case of conviction was accordingly to be a fine. His brother was still in danger. Early in 184 C. Minucius Augurinus brought a finable action[1949] against Lucius concerning the money received from Antiochus.[1950] He was condemned by the tribes, whereupon the prosecutor demanded surety (praedes) for the payment of the fine. But when Scipio failed to comply, the tribune attempted to imprison him. Returning suddenly to Rome, Publius appealed to the tribunes in behalf of his brother. Whereas eight members of the college sustained the prosecutor, one of them, Ti. Gracchus, prevented the imprisonment and consequently the collection of the fine.[1951] But the total result of the proceedings was the overthrow of the Scipios, and the conqueror of Hannibal retired heart-broken to his country estate.[1952] In the same year, 184, M. Porcius Cato, at that time censor, was prosecuted for official misconduct by tribunes in a finable action for two talents, but was in all probability acquitted.[1953] In this period the tribes must have been unusually active in a judicial capacity,[1954] as Cato was himself prosecuted forty-four times, often doubtless before the comitia tributa, but was always given a favorable verdict.[1955] C. Lucretius, praetor in 171, was accused in the senate by Chalcidian ambassadors of merciless cruelties and robberies perpetrated by him on their community. Thereupon two tribunes of the plebs, M’. Juventius Thalna and Cn. Aufidius, prosecuted him before the people, technically on a charge of furtum and iniuria. He was condemned by all the tribes to a fine of a million asses.[1956] But after 149 most cases of misgovernment in the provinces came before the quaestio repetundarum instituted in that year.[1957] There were occasional prosecutions for beginning war without authorization.[1958] Toward the end of the pre-Gracchan oligarchy C. Laelius Sapiens, the friend of Scipio Aemilianus, seems to have been brought to trial for malversation in his consulship of the year 140, but was probably acquitted.[1959] A peculiar case, yet characteristic of the time, was that against Cn. Tremellius, praetor in 160, for having “contended injuriously” with the supreme pontiff. It is stated merely that he was fined. If the action came before the people, it must have been brought by a tribune, as the pontiff’s jurisdiction was restricted, so far as is known, to the sacerdotes under his supervision. Whatever may have been the procedure, the effect was to place the religious official above the magistrate[1960]—a policy which could be expected of the generation that adopted the Aelian and Fufian laws.[1961]