w in 629, and the insurrection of the Fregellans
arising out of it, were significant indications both of the obstinate
perseverance of the fraction of the burgesses that ruled the comitia,
and of the impatient urgency of the allies. Towards the end of his
second tribunate (632) Gracchus, probably urged by obligations which
he had undertaken towards the allies, ventured on a second attempt.
In concert with Marcus Flaccus--who, although a consular, had again
taken the tribuneship of the people, in order now to carry the law
which he had formerly proposed without success--he made a proposal
to grant to the Latins the full franchise, and to the other Italian
allies the former rights of the Latins. But the proposal encountered
the united opposition of the senate and the mob of the capital.
The nature of this coalition and its mode of conflict are clearly and
distinctly seen from an accidentally preserved fragment of the speech
which the consul Gaius Fannius made to the burgesses in opposition to
the proposal. "Do you then think," said the Optimate, "that, if you
confer the franchise on the Latins, you will be able to find a place
in future--just as you are now standing there in front of me--in the
burgess-assembly, or at the games and popular amusements? Do you not
believe, on the contrary, that those people will occupy every spot?"
Among the burgesses of the fifth century, who on one day conferred
the franchise on all the Sabines, such an orator might perhaps have
been hissed; those of the seventh found his reasoning uncommonly clear
and the price of the assignation of the Latin domains, which was
offered to it by Gracchus, far too low. The very circumstance, that
the senate carried a permission to eject from the city all non-
burgesses before the day for the decisive vote, showed the fate in
store for the proposal. And when before the voting Livius Drusus,
a colleague of Gracchus, interposed his veto against the law, the
people received the veto in such a way that Gracchus could not
venture to proceed further or even to prepare for Drusus the fate
of Marcus Octavius.

Overthrow of Gracchus

It was, apparently, this success which emboldened the senate to
attempt the overthrow of the victorious demagogue. The weapons of
attack were substantially the same with which Gracchus himself had
formerly operated. The power of Gracchus rested on the mercantile
class and the proletariate; primarily on the latter, which in this