Certainly, Lucullus had deserved well of his country, and it was cruel to deprive him of the glory of terminating a war which he had prosperously begun;[895] but the definitive success of the campaign demanded his substitution, and the instinct of the people did not deceive them. Often, in difficult cases, they see more clearly than an assembly preoccupied with the interests of castes or of persons, and events soon show that they are right.
Lucullus had announced at Rome the end of the war; yet Mithridates was far from being conquered. This fierce enemy of the Romans, who had continued the struggle twenty-four years, and whom evil fortune had never been able to discourage, would not treat, despite his sixty four years and recent reverses, save on conditions inadmissible by the Romans. The fame of Pompey then was not useless against such an adversary. His ascendency alone could bring back discipline into the army and intimidate the enemy. In fact, his presence was sufficient to re-establish order, and retain under their standards the old soldiers who had obtained their discharge, and wished to return to their homes;[896] they formed the flower of the army, and were known under the name of _Valerians_.[897] On the other hand, Tigranes, having learned the arrival of Pompey, abandoned the party of his father-in-law, declaring that this general was the only one to whom he would submit,[898] so much does the prestige of one man, says Dio Cassius, lord it over that of another.[899]
Manilius then demanded the re-establishment of the law of Caius Gracchus, by virtue of which the _centuria prærogativa_, instead of being drawn by lot from the first classes of the tribes, was taken indiscriminately from all the classes, which destroyed the distinctions of rank and fortune in the elections, and deprived the richer of their electoral privileges.[900]
We see that it was generally the tribunes of the people who, obeying the inspiration of greater men, took the initiative in the more popular measures. But the major part, without disinterestedness or moderation, often compromised those who had recourse to their services by their unruly ardour and subversive opinions. Manilius, in 688, suddenly re-opened a question which always created great agitation at Rome; this was the political emancipation of the freedmen. He obtained, by a surprise, the readoption of the law Sulpicia, which gave a vote to the freedmen by distributing them among the thirty-five tribes, and asserted that he had the consent of Crassus and Pompey. But the Senate revoked the law some time after its adoption, agreeing in this with the chiefs of the popular party, who did not think it was demanded by public opinion.[901]