Page:Roman Constitutional History, 753-44 B.C..djvu/192

 CHAPTER II.

THE OLIGARCHY, THE EQUESTRIAN COURTS, AND THE CITIZENSHIP OF THE ITALIANS, 111-88 B.C.

I. The Misgovernment of the Oligarchy and the Rise of Gaius Marius.

Incompetence and Corruption of the Oligarchy. — The oligarchy returned to power neither wiser nor better. It was more deficient than ever in statesmen and generals of ability. It was too selfish to approve the agrarian reforms of the Gracchi, too short-sighted and incompetent to attempt restricting the legislative powers of the revolutionary tribunate, or to deal with the question of the citizenship of the Italians. It did not venture to attack the distribution of grain, or, for a time, the law respecting jurymen, though it was filled with rancor against the equestrian class as well as against the proletariat.

The censors of 115 expelled thirty-two senators, probably not so much on account of their morals as their sympathy with the democrats. They appear also to have exhorted Marcus Aemilius Scaurus to carry a law which confined the freedmen to the city districts. Such a regulation properly belonged to the legislative, and not to the censorial, powers. Scaurus now became the first senator (princeps senatus) and continued to hold that position for about a quarter of a century.

In 106 an attempt was at last made to reinstate the senators as jurymen. The Servilian law (lex Servilia judiciaria)