The growing strength of the people and at the same time the increasing dependence of the optimates on religion for the control of politics are indicated by a law of 103 concerning the election of sacerdotes. More than a hundred years earlier[2424] was instituted the custom of electing the supreme pontiff and the chief curio in comitia of seventeen tribes designated by lot. Toward the end of the plutocratic régime C. Licinius Crassus in the interest of the people attempted in vain to pass a law for extending the principle to all the members of the more important sacerdotal colleges.[2425] The proposal was defeated by the eloquence of C. Laelius,[2426] but at length it was passed as the lex de sacerdotiis of Cn. Domitius, tribune of the plebs in 103. The statute affected the pontifical and augural colleges, the decemviri sacris faciundis, and the epulones.[2427] According to the new arrangement when a place became vacant in any one of these colleges, the members of the college drew up a list of eligible candidates from whom the comitia sacerdotum, composed as above described, made a choice.[2428] In spite of this law religion remained a political tool of the optimates. Meantime the popular party succeeded in enacting economic laws. A Porcian statute concerning interest, which may well have aimed to benefit the poor, seems to be the work of M. Porcius Cato, consul in 118. The author had to defend the act against several attempts to repeal it.[2429] In 109 under the stress of the Cimbric war the consul M. Junius Silanus passed an act for repealing several earlier laws which had diminished the pay of soldiers. We may reasonably believe that it restored the Sempronian law on the subject.[2430] His immediate object was to encourage enlistments.[2431] An agrarian rogation was offered by L. Marcius Philipus, tribune of the plebs in 104. As the author was at heart a democrat, his measure was doubtless inspired with the spirit of the Gracchi. Perhaps it aimed to restore their law; but lacking determination, the proposer readily allowed it to be voted down.[2432] The monetary lex Clodia, which probably belongs to the same year, has no political significance.[2433] III. _The Appuleian Legislation and the Rule of the Moderate Optimates_ 103-88