A source-book of ancient history - The Search For Mecca

Proposal to Extend the Citizenship 425
was sent from Asia as an ambassador, who had not yet
been in any magistracy. He was carried in a Htter, when
a herdsman from the peasantry of Venusium met him,
and not knowing what they were carrying, asked in joke
whether they were bearing a dead body? Having heard
this, he ordered the Htter to be set down and the man to
be beaten with the ropes by which the Htter was fastened,
tiU he gave up the ghost." Now this speech of his, upon Further
°
comment.
SO violent and cruel an outrage, differs nothing at all from
the style of common conversation.
He called the Latin allies to demand the full rights of The Latins
Roman citizenship, for the senate could not with decency Italians,
refuse this privilege to kinsmen by blood. To the other Appian, Civil
allies, who were not allowed to vote in Roman assemblies,
he sought to give the right of suffrage, in order to have
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their help m the enactment of laws which he had m mmd. etc.,
Greatly alarmed at this, the senate ordered the consuls to
give public notice: "Nobody who does not possess the
right of suffrage shall stay in
the city or approach within
forty stadia of it while the voting is going on concerning
these laws." The senate also persuaded Livius Drusus,
another tribune, to interpose his veto against the laws proposed
by Gracchus, but not to tell the people his reasons
for doing so; for a tribune was not required to give reasons
for his veto.
In order to win the people they gave Drusus
the privilege of founding twelve colonies, and the plebeians
were so much pleased with this that they began to scoff at
the laws proposed by Gracchus.
Wars, 1. 23.
(For colonies,
allies,
see
d^^^AnJeni
World, 361-5.
III.
Gaius Marius
He took all who were willing to join him, the greater His army,
number from the lowest ranks. Some said this was done