Gracchi Marius and Sulla | Page 9

of
Rome had the Jus Suffragii and the Jus Honorum, i.e. the right to vote
and the right to hold office. [Sidenote: The Roman Colony.] A Roman
Colony was in its organization Rome in miniature, and the people
among whom it had been planted as a garrison may either have retained
their own political constitution, or have been governed by a magistrate
sent from Rome. They were not Roman citizens except as being
residents of a Roman city, but by irregular marriages with Romans the
line of demarcation between the two peoples may have grown less
clearly defined. [Sidenote: The Praefectura.] Praefectura was the
generic name for Roman colonies and for all Municipia to which
prefects were sent annually to administer justice. [Sidenote: Municipia]
Municipia are supposed to have been originally those conquered Italian

towns to which Connubium and Commercium, i.e. rights of
intermarriage and of trade, were given, but from whom Jus Suffragii
and Jus Honorum were withheld. These privileges, however, were
conferred on them before the Social War. Some were governed by
Roman magistrates and some were self-governed. They voted in the
Roman tribes, though probably only at important crises, such as the
agitation for an agrarian law. They were under the jurisdiction of the
Praetor Urbanus, but vicarious justice was administered among them by
an official called Praefectus juri dicundo, sent yearly from Rome.
[Sidenote: The Latini.] The Latini had no vote at Rome, no right of
holding offices, and were practically Roman subjects. A Roman who
joined a Latin colony ceased to be a Roman citizen. Whether there was
any difference between the internal administration of a Latin colony
and an old Latin town is uncertain. The Latini may have had
Commercium and Connubium, or only the former. They certainly had
not Jus Suffragii or Jus Honorum, and they were in subjection to Rome.
A Latin could obtain the Roman franchise, but the mode of doing so at
this time is a disputed point. Livy mentions a law which enabled a
Latin to obtain the franchise by migrating to Rome and being enrolled
in the census, provided he left children behind him to fill his place.
There is no doubt that either legally or irregularly Latini did migrate to
Rome and did so obtain the citizenship, but we know no more. Others
say that the later right by which a Latin obtained the citizenship in
virtue of filling a magistracy in his native town existed already.
[Sidenote: The Socii.] Of the Socii, all or many of them had treaties
defining their relations to Rome, and were therefore known as
Foederatae Civitates. They had internal self-government, but were
bound to supply Rome with soldiers, ships, and sailors.
[Sidenote: Grievances of the Latins and allies.] At the time of the
Gracchi discontent was seething among the Latins and allies. There
were two classes among them--the rich landlords and capitalists, who
prospered as the rich at Rome prospered, and the poor who were
weighed down by debt or were pushed out of their farms by
slave-labour, or were hangers-on of the rich in the towns and eager for

distributions of land. The poor were oppressed no doubt by the rich
men both of their own cities and of Rome. The rich chafed at the
intolerable insolence of Roman officials. It was not that Rome
interfered with the local self-government she had granted by treaty, but
the Italians laboured under grievous disabilities and oppression. So late
as the Jugurthine war, Latin officers were executed by martial law,
whereas any Roman soldier could appeal to a civil tribunal. Again,
while the armies had formerly been recruited from the Romans and the
allies equally, now the severest service and the main weight of wars fell
on the latter, who furnished, moreover, two soldiers to every Roman.
Again, without a certain amount of property, a man at Rome could not
be enrolled in the army; but the rule seems not to have applied to
Italians. Nor was the civil less harsh than the military administration. A
consul's wife wished to use the men's bath at Teanum; and because the
bathers were not cleared out quickly enough, and the baths were not
clean enough, M. Marius, the chief magistrate of the town, was stripped
and scourged in the market-place. A free herdsman asked in joke if it
was a corpse that was in a litter passing through Venusia, and which
contained a young Roman. Though not even an official, its occupant
showed that, if lazy, he was at least alive, by having the peasant
whipped to death with the litter straps. In short, the rich Italians would
feel the need of the franchise as strongly as the old plebeians had felt it,
and all the more strongly because the Romans had not only ceased to
enfranchise