The projects of law regarding the recall of Lucullus and the expedition against the pirates were introduced by the tribune of the people Aulus Gabinius, a man ruined in finances and morals, but a dexterous negotiator, a bold orator, and a brave soldier.

Little as the assurance of Pompeius, that he had no wish at all for the chief command in the war with the pirates and only longed for domestic repose, were meant in earnest, there was probably this much of truth in them, that the bold and active client, who was in confidential intercourse with Pompeius and his more immediate circle and who completely saw through the situation and the men, took the decision to a considerable extent out of the hands of his shortsighted and resourceless patron.
The Parties in Relation to the Gabinian Laws The democracy, discontented as its leaders might be in secret, could not well come publicly forward against the project of law.
It would, to all appearance, have been in no case able to hinder the carrying of the law; but it would by opposition have openly broken with Pompeius and thereby compelled him either to make approaches to the oligarchy or regardlessly to pursue his personal policy in the face of both parties.

No course was left to the democrats but still even now to adhere to their alliance with Pompeius, hollow as it was, and to embrace the present opportunity of at least definitely overthrowing the senate and passing over from opposition into government, leaving the ulterior issue to the future and to the well-known weakness of Pompeius' character.
Accordingly their leaders--the praetor Lucius Quinctius, the same who seven years before had exerted himself for the restoration of the tribunician power,( 11) and the former quaestor Gaius Caesar-- supported the Gabinian proposals.
The privileged classes were furious--not merely the nobility, but also the mercantile aristocracy, which felt its exclusive rights endangered by so thorough a state-revolution and once more recognized its true patron in the senate.

When the tribune Gabinius after the introduction of his proposals appeared in the senate-house, the fathers of the city were almost on the point of strangling him with their own hands, without considering in their zeal how extremely disadvantageous for them this method of arguing must have ultimately proved.

The tribune escaped to the Forum and summoned the multitude to storm the senate-house, when just at the right time the sitting terminated.