By far the most important measure of the year was the Gabinian law for the appointment of an especial commander against the pirates. The proposition was that from the consulares should be chosen a general for putting down the pirates; that his province should be the entire Mediterranean and a strip of its coasts extending fifty miles inland, including Italy and the islands; that the command should continue three years; that the holder of this imperium should have the right to fifteen legati and 200 ships, and the privilege of enlisting soldiers and oarsmen over all his province; that he should have credit with the aerarium at Rome and the publicans in the provinces for 6000 talents.[2714] The name of Pompey did not appear in the bill, but no one doubted who was to be the man. The optimates were all opposed, though in 74 they had given Antonius such a command,[2715] which now served Gabinius as a precedent. The senate was compelled by threats of the people to yield, but used its influence on the colleagues of Gabinius to have them oppose the measure. Two of them, L. Roscius Otho, author of the lex theatralis,[2716] and L. Trebellius, attempted to prevent comitial action. The tribes began to vote the deposition of Trebellius; but before the eighteenth was called he desisted.[2717] Thereafter both remained silent, and the law was passed. Pompey was then elected to the command by the tribes.[2718] They enacted further that he should have two quaestors, twenty-four legati pro praetore, 500 ships, 120,000 men, and 5000 cavalry. On one point only the senate refused its sanction; it would not permit Gabinius to be a legatus.[2719] An article of the statute gave as a province to the outgoing consul, M’. Acilius Glabrio, Bithynia and Pontus with the conduct of the war against Mithridates.[2720] The Gabinian law led to far-reaching consequences. It established temporarily, not precisely a monarchy, but a dyarchy, as the Roman world was thereby divided between the senate and a general with almost absolute power. The arrangement was a prototype of the Augustan system. At the outset the act seemed to be justified by the results, for immediately after its adoption the price of grain fell from the famine height to which the piratical control of the seas had forced it.[2721]