Page:Roman Constitutional History, 753-44 B.C..djvu/188

174 Further Projects of Gaius Gracchus. — Gaius Gracchus seems to have been too sure of his popularity and his influence. Though holding the office of tribune, he left the city and traveled about in Italy, attending to his administrative duties. He had further legislative projects, but they were of no great interest to the urban multitude. He proposed, it would seem, that the centuries should vote according to an order decided on each occasion by lot. Together with Marcus Flaccus he made the proposal to concede citizenship to the Latins, and perhaps to grant the other Italian allies the rights of those Latins who were entitled to citizenship when settling in Rome (p. 94). This was an eminently just and statesmanlike proposition, and it would have removed the chief objection to the distribution of the public domain occupied by the allies. It bade fair also to conciliate so large a number of voters as would permanently insure democratic supremacy — a precedent for the enfranchisement of the negroes in our own times. But the multitude considered Roman citizenship too great a distinction and too copious a source of profit to be shared with the allies. Hence the bill was safely vetoed by another tribune and lost.

Bills of Livius Drusus. — This result indicated that the multitude were not loyal to Gracchus, and would be willing to support the highest bidder. Accordingly, the interceding tribune Marcus Livius Drusus, as the spokesman of the aristocrats, brought before the people three bills, providing that exemption from corporal punishment should be granted to the Latins, that the rent payable according to the agrarian law of Gracchus be remitted, and that twelve colonies of three thousand citizens each be established in Italy. This dishonest and rather clumsy scheme succeeded. Gracchus imprudently absented himself from the city for seventy days about this time, being busily engaged in founding the colony at Carthage, to which he despatched six thousand