The Italian Wars, 91–83 b.c.

Abstract

The stormy opening of the first century b.c. was followed by an interval of calm, or rather of stagnation, in which the senatorial aristocracy let its new lease of power run itself out without any serious attempt to set its house in order. The only notable reform of this period was a resolution passed by the Senate in 97 against human sacrifices, by which it strengthened its hands against a recurrence of popular outcries such as that of 114 (p. 213). While the government was taking its siesta a crisis which had been gathering in the last thirty years came upon it unawares. The demand of the Italian allies for the Roman franchise, which the Senate had eluded but by no means silenced in the days of Fulvius Flaccus and Gaius Gracchus, was raised again in a more menacing tone. In the Jugurthan and Cimbric Wars the allies had contributed their full share to the Roman victories, and the career of Marius, who came from an obscure country town — albeit from one which happened to have been raised to full Roman status — showed once for all that Italians were no less fit to exercise high command than Romans in the narrow sense. In 100 their expectations had been raised by Saturninus’s colonial act (p. 220), and large numbers of Italian stalwarts had flocked to Rome to clamour or to scuffle on behalf of this measure. But Saturninus’s law was allowed to lapse, and those of his followers who stayed on in the capital to continue the campaign of intimidation were condemned under a law brought forward in 95 by the consuls L. Licinius Crassus and Q. Mucius Scaevola, which set up a quaestio on aliens who were claiming to be citizens.