At this time the power of the optimates was rather decreasing, and signs of promise for the people appeared. In the year 103, a law had been passed which took from the senate the right to select the chief pontiffs, and it had been given to the populares. [Footnote: This important law was passed through the tribune Cneius Domitius Ahenobarbus, in order to effect his own election as pontiff in the place of his father, and is known as the Domitian law. The people elected him afterward out of gratitude. The chief pontiff was an influential factor in politics, as he pronounced the verdict of the Sibylline books on public questions, and gave or withheld the divine approval from public acts, besides appointing the rites and sacrifices.] An agrarian law was proposed in the following year, a speaker on the subject asserting that in the entire republic there were not two thousand landholders, so rapidly had the rich been able to concentrate in themselves the ownership of the land. The powers of the senate were still further restricted in the year 100, by a law intended to punish magistrates who had improperly received money, and to take from the senators the right to try such offences. [Footnote: The exact date of this law is uncertain. It was directed against Quintus Servilius Cæpio, who, when the barbarians were threatening Italy, commanded in Gaul, and enriched himself by the wealth of Tolosa, which he took (B.C. 106), thus giving rise to the proverb, "He has gold of Toulouse"--ill-gotten gains (_aurum Tolosanum habet_). He was also held responsible for a terrible defeat at Arausio (Orange), where eighty thousand Romans and forty thousand camp-followers perished, October 6, B.C. 105. The day became another black one in the Roman calendar.] At the same time the right of citizenship was offered to all Italians who should succeed in convicting a magistrate of peculation or extortion. Thus it seemed as though the reforms aimed at by the Gracchi might be brought about if only the man for the occasion were to present himself. Marius presented himself, but we shall find that he mistook his means, and only cast the nation down into deeper depths of misery. His star was at its highest when he celebrated his triumph, and it would have been better for his fame had he died at that time. XIII. SOCIAL AND CIVIL WARS.