though the colonies were Roman, Italians were to be admitted to
them. But there is another possible explanation. It is certain that
many Italians passed as citizens at Rome. In 187 B.C. 12,000 Latins,
passing as Roman citizens, had been obliged to quit Rome. In 95 B.C.
there was another clearance of aliens, which was one of the immediate
causes of the Social War. Fictitious citizens might have found it easy
to obtain allotments from a consul whose ears, if first made deaf by
the din of arms, had never since recovered their hearing. However
this may be, it was the rural party which by violence procured a
preponderance of votes at the ballot-boxes, and it was the town
populace which resisted what it felt to be an invasion of its
prerogative by the men from the country. [Sidenote: Exile of
Metellus.] Marius is said to have got rid of Metellus by a trick. He
pretended that he would not take the oath which the law demanded, but,
when Metellus had said the same thing, told the Senate that he would
swear to obey the law as far as it was a law, in order to induce the
rural voters to leave Rome, and Metellus, scorning such a subterfuge,
went into exile.

[Sidenote: Corn-law of Saturninus.] Another law of Saturninus either
renewed the corn-law of Caius Gracchus, or went farther and made the
price of grain merely nominal. This law was no doubt meant to recover
the favour of the city mob, which he had forfeited by his agrarian
law. But Caepio, son, probably, of the hero of Tolosa, stopped
the voting by force, and the law was not carried. [Sidenote: Law of
treason.] The third law of Saturninus was a Lex de Majestate, a law by
which anyone could be prosecuted for treason against the State, and
which was not improbably aimed specially at Caepio, who was impeached
under it. It seems at any rate certain that of these laws the agrarian
was the chief, and the others subsidiary; in other words, that he and
Glaucia were working together on an organized plan, and striving to
admit the whole Roman world into a community of rights with Rome. They
thought that with the Marian soldiers at their back they would be
safer than Gracchus with his bands of reapers; and so they may have
taken the initiative in violence from which, both by past events and
the acts of men like Caepio, it was certain that the optimates would
not shrink. It is difficult to apportion the blame in such cases.
[Sidenote: Civil strife. Saturninus seizes the Capitol.] But when