tion. But they saw that things were
going from bad to worse; and when at last one of their order came
forward who cared enough to take risks, they rallied round him. This was
M. Livius Drusus, a young man of lofty family, who thought the men of
his own order were partly to blame for what was happening. They held
aloof and let vulgar and ignorant men like Marius and his associates,
Glaucia and Saturninus (men of very low character who led the crowd by
promises and bribes), drag the good name of Rome down. Two things
stirred Drusus to action: one the shocking unfairness of the law courts,
the other the fact that the people of Italy were shut out of all share
in their own government. Everything was settled in Rome: the Italians
had no voice. The consuls and other magistrates who made and
administered the laws were chosen by Roman votes only. Yet the Italians
had to send men to the army and pay taxes.

Drusus got his Bill for the reform of the law courts through (91) in
spite of the moneyed men, since he proposed that the judges should be
partly chosen from the Senate, and a strong body of senators backed this
up. But when his Bill giving votes to the Italians came up things were
different. There he could count on very little support. It did not help
him in Rome that, when he fell ill, prayers for his recovery were put up
in every town in Italy. This was indeed used against him by his enemies
in Rome, who said there was a conspiracy going on. The rich Italians,
too, made common cause with the rich men in Rome. Some of the
aristocrats stood by Drusus, but the majority in Rome was against him.

Throughout Italy the struggle round his Bill raised an intense and deep
excitement. Then one night Drusus was murdered in the street as he was
going home. The murderer vanished. No inquiry was made. Drusus's Bill
was dropped; his party was crushed. His enemies at once rushed through a
measure setting up a court before which every one suspected of
sympathizing with votes for Italians was to be charged.

But the hopes of the Italians could not be crushed thus. The news of
Drusus's murder ran like an earthquake shock through Italy. Feeling was
at fever pitch. Rome refused to recognize Italian rights: the Italians
would compel it to do so by the sword. All over the peninsula feverish
preparations went on. A few months after Drusus's death fighting broke
out at Asculum in the south and spread like lightning all over the north
and centre.