Mommsen[2508] supposes that these jurors were for the quaestio de maiestate only. For this opinion he depends upon the assertion of Cicero[2509] that the equites remained till Sulla’s legislation in uninterrupted possession of the courts. The authority of Cicero, however, would allow us to assume that while the equites lost the legal monopoly they retained practical control. However that may be, it is hardly possible that this reactionary measure survived the proletarian uprising under Marius and Cinna. The lex agraria of the same Plautius seems to have been intended for supplying the veterans of the Social War with farms.[2510] The lex Papiria, which introduced the semiuncial _as_, is doubtless to be assigned to C. Papirius Carbo, the colleague of Plautius above mentioned. If so, the object was to relieve slightly the financial embarrassment caused by the war, and more particularly to bring the small coins of Rome into correspondence with those of Italy.[2511] IV. _The Political Equalization of Italy_ 88-83 With many Italians still in revolt and the others smarting under the inferior citizenship eked out to them, and with Mithridates threatening the existence of the empire, Rome should have adopted a policy of domestic conciliation. Under these circumstances Sulla, consul in 88, showed a lamentable want of tact in expressing the sentiment that there could be no peace in Italy as long as a single Samnite lived[2512]—a curiously antiquated frame of mind for a statesman of his shrewdness. The cause of the new citizens was taken up by P. Sulpicius Rufus, a patrician who had forsaken his rank to qualify himself for the plebeian tribunate.[2513] A man of marvellous eloquence, he had been an adherent of Drusus, though more inclined to the equestrian interests. As tribune of the plebs, 88, he seems to have tried to win the support of the senate and of the equestrian order to his policy; but failing in the attempt, he looked for aid to the commons and to a small band of knights who were faithful to him. His rogation contained the following articles: (1) that the new citizens and the libertini should be distributed among all the tribes,[2514] with a view to completing the plan of Livius Drusus for the political equalization of Italy; (2) that those who had been driven from the state by violence should be recalled.[2515] This article was probably for the benefit of those knights against whom the Varian law had been turned.[2516] His rogation provided further, (3) that no one who owed more than two thousand denarii should be a senator.[2517] Money was scarce because of the war;[2518] and Sulpicius must have felt that if the senators, most of whom were abundantly able, should pay their debts, it would go far toward relieving the stringency, and that if any were ejected because of failure to pay, an opportunity would be afforded of promoting equites to the vacant places. The consuls of the year, L. Cornelius Sulla and Q.