east had most decidedly
and most effectively taken his side. It was agreed between them that
for 654 Marius should become a candidate for a sixth consulship,
Saturninus for a second tribunate, Glaucia for the praetorship, in order
that, possessed of these offices, they might carry out the intended
revolution in the state. The senate acquiesced in the nomination of
the less dangerous Glaucia, but did what it could to hinder the election
of Marius and Saturninus, or at least to associate with the former a
determined antagonist in the person of Quintus Metellus as his colleague
in the consulship. All appliances, lawful and unlawful, were put in
motion by both parties; but the senate was not successful in arresting
the dangerous conspiracy in the bud. Marius did not disdain in person
to solicit votes and, it was said, even to purchase them; in fact, at
the tribunician elections when nine men from the list of the government
party were proclaimed, and the tenth place seemed already secured for a
respectable man of the same complexion Quintus Nunnius, the latter was
set upon and slain by a savage band, which is said to have been mainly
composed of discharged soldiers of Marius. Thus the conspirators gained
their object, although by the most violent means. Marius was chosen as
consul, Glaucia as praetor, Saturninus as tribune of the people for 654;
the second consular place was obtained not by Quintus Metellus, but by
an insignificant man, Lucius Valerius Flaccus: the confederates might
proceed to put into execution the further schemes which they
contemplated and to complete the work broken off in 633.

The Appuleian Laws

Let us recall the objects which Gaius Gracchus pursued, and the means
by which he pursued them. His object was to break down the oligarchy
within and without. He aimed, on the one hand, to restore the power of
the magistrates, which had become completely dependent on the senate, to
its original sovereign rights, and to re-convert the senatorial assembly
from a governing into a deliberative board; and, on the other hand, to
put an end to the aristocratic division of the state into the three
classes of the ruling burgesses, the Italian allies, and the subjects,
by the gradual equalization of those distinctions which were
incompatible with a government not oligarchical. These ideas the three
confederates revived in the colonial laws, which Saturninus as tribune
of the people had partly introduced alrea