A glance at these reactionary measures alone would leave the impression that the senate was recovering its entire supremacy. This result might have been reached had it not been on the one hand for the lasting inspiration of the Gracchan spirit in the plebs and their leaders, and on the other the new position of the equites. In 119 C. Marius, at once a representative of the knights[2406] and of the peasants, opposed as tribune of the plebs the senatorial aristocracy, which now had to depend for immediate support upon the populace.[2407] The optimates had greatly impaired the value of the secret ballot through the custodes tabellarum, who stood on the pontes as well as by the boxes (cistae) to keep watch over the voting. They were often influential men[2408]—in elections selected by the candidates[2409]—who used their influence with the voters, especially of the principium or of the prerogative century,[2410] thereby maintaining for the aristocrats a high degree of control over the comitia in spite of the ballot laws.[2411] For this reason C. Marius when tribune of the plebs carried an act for making the pontes narrower that there might be room on them for the voters only.[2412] The politicians, however, soon found means of circumventing this law as well as the use of the ballot.[2413] The populares could expect little therefore from the plebiscite of C. Caelius, 107, which by extending the ballot to trials of perduellio, completed the abolition of oral voting in the comitia.[2414]