lands now in office shall, within the next five days after ascertaining that the law has been enacted, swear in the manner described below: also that the dictator, consul, praetor, master of horse, censor, aedile, and other officials as above enumerated, and the index appointed under this law shall in future take the oath within five days after entering upon their magistracies or imperia. They shall give oath to the urban quaestor publicly in front of the temple of Castor, swearing by Jupiter and the di Penates that they will do as the law requires and will not with knowledge and malice prepense violate the law or by intercession or otherwise hinder its administration. He who fails to swear shall not be candidate for a magistracy or imperium, or manage or retain either, or address the senate or be chosen into it; and the quaestor shall keep a list of those who have taken the oath. The fourth article provides that whoever is or shall be a senator, or shall have the right of addressing the senate after this law has been passed, shall within the next ten days after ascertaining the fact of its enactment take an oath like that described in article 3. The penalty for failure to swear is not mentioned in the extant fragment, but must at the mildest have been expulsion from the senate. Closely connected with the transfer of the iudicia from the senators to the knights is the statute of Gaius concerning the taxation of Asia. It ordered the censors to let out the taxes of this province to the highest bidders; and it limited the right of the senate to lessen the sum agreed upon.[2346] Under such an arrangement, however, no sufficient guarantee could be provided for the security of the provincials from publican exactions.[2347] The political result of this legislation in favor of the knights was to invest them not only with an important share in the administration, but through the courts with a superiority even over the senate.[2348] The opposition of the poorer class to the aristocracy could never be otherwise than uncertain and fitful; but the knights with their immense wealth and their efficient organization were to be henceforth an ever present rival of the senate. The author of the law had given the state a double head,[2349] which was to prove the source of civil discord; or nearly in his own words, he had thrust into the body of the senate a sword which nothing could withdraw.[2350] For a few months their benefactor may have cherished the delusion that he could depend upon their grateful support; he lived to discover that they cared not for him or his reforms but only for their immediate interests. In his work of construction the statesman found them slightly more serviceable than the proletariate.