acchi had fallen,
the Social War finally effected. No historian has given sufficient
prominence to the fact that it was primarily a country movement
of which each of these men was the leader; a movement of unbroken
continuity, though each used his own means and had his own special
temperament. If this is kept in view, we shall no longer consider with
some modern historians that no event perhaps in Roman history is so
sudden, so unconnected, and accordingly so obscure in its original
causes as this revolt or conspiracy of Saturninus.

Like Caius Gracchus, Saturninus represented rural as opposed to urban
interests, and the interests of the provinces as opposed to those
of the capital. Like Caius, too, he endeavoured to conciliate the
equites; but they had all the Roman prejudice against admitting
Italians to a level with themselves, and the attempt to play off
party against party utterly failed. In vain Saturninus tried to defy
opposition by enlisting the support of the Marian veterans. The rich,
the noble, and the city mob united against him; and when he seized the
Capitol, it was to defend himself against all three. In the year 100
B.C. Marius was consul for the sixth time, Glaucia was praetor, and
Saturninus was a second time tribune. A triumvirate so powerful might,
if united, have overthrown the Constitution. But the vanity and
vacillation of Marius were the best allies of the optimates; and it
was no grown man, but Caius Julius Caesar, a child born in that same
year, who was destined to subvert their rule. [Sidenote: The
Lex Servilia. The equites and the judicia.] Saturninus had been
instrumental in securing the election of Marius to his fifth
consulship in 102, and it was about that time that the Lex Servilia
was carried. This law defined the liability of Roman officials to
trial for extortion in the provinces, and, by a process of elimination
(for senators, workers for hire, and others were expressly declared
ineligible), practically left to the equites the jurisdiction in such
trials. Whether or no the law of Gracchus had been repealed by another
Servilian law--that of Q. Servilius Caepio--we cannot say for certain.
If so, the second Servilian law repealed the first. But, whether it
restored power to the equites or only confirmed them in it, in theory
it left the office of judex open to all citizens, for, while it
excluded so many citizens that in practice the judicia were closed to
all but the equestrian class,