Note 2316 — Chapter XVI · COMITIAL LEGISLATION From the Gracchi to Sulla 134-82

The epitomator of Livy, lx, supposes that Gaius offered and actually carried a measure for adding six hundred knights to the senate with the understanding that the jurors were to be drawn from that body thus enlarged; cf. Mommsen, Röm. Staatsr. iii. 530, n. 1. Such an act, however, could not have been termed a lex iudiciaria, as it would have been concerned simply with the composition of the senate. Everything is opposed to the assumption that the bill in this form passed or at least that it was put into effect. Plutarch, C. Gracch. 5 f., seems to signify that his law provided for an album of six hundred jurors, one half to be drawn from the senate, the rest from the knights. It is by no means necessary, with Fowler, in Eng. Hist. Rev. xx (1905). 426, n. 16, to interpret the expression ὁ δὲ τριακοσίους τῶν ἱππέων προσκατέλεξεν αὐτοῖς οὖσι τριακοσίοις, καὶ τὰς κρίσεις κοινὰς τῶν ἑξακοσίωον ἐποίησε (cf. Ag. et Cleom. et Gracch. Comp. 2) as “adding three hundred equites to the senate to form the body of iudices.” These sources have confused the projects with the law as actually passed; cf. Strachan-Davidson, Appian, p. 23.