Page:Roman Constitutional History, 753-44 B.C..djvu/199

Rh ; then they occupied the Capitol to protect themselves. Martial law was declared. Marius forced them to surrender, and in violation of his promise allowed them to be massacred.

Revival of the Oligarchy. — Marius, having in this manner destroyed his influence among the democrats, and his political prospects, afterward left for the East; while his bitterest enemy, Metellus Numidicus, whom he and Saturninus had banished, returned triumphantly. The equestrian order and the proletariat were estranged through the recent events, and were bitterly opposed to each other. The oligarchy was once more supreme and seemed firmly established.

The new laws of Saturninus were declared null and void. Marius had not established a single colony, and his soldiers were put off with the founding of a colony in Corsica. The people in general had to be content with the colony of Eporedia beyond the Po. The oligarchy tried to get rid of some ex-tribunes by impeachment. Sextus Titius, for instance, who had ventured to carry an agrarian law in 99, was condemned, and his law declared invalid.

The Caecilio-Didian Law. — Chiefly to prevent legislative surprises and to impede tribunician legislation, the Caecilio-Didian law of 98 required that at least sixteen days (trinundinum) were to intervene between the day of announcing a bill (promulgatio rogationis) and the day set for voting on it, and that heterogeneous provisions (lex satura) should not be combined in one bill. The interval had usually been observed before; the combination of different proposals, as in the Licinio-Sextian law, had been forbidden before, but the prohibition was now to be more strictly enforced.