CHAPTER I THE ENFRANCHISEMENT OF ITALY I. THE PEOPLE AND ITS GENERALS N the years which lie between the close of the Gracchan episode qa the outbreak of the Social] War the domestic history of Rome is a melancholy and unremunerative study. ‘The period was one of depression, when flaws in the fabric of the State were made uncomfortably plain yet nothing worth the mention was done for their repair. Attention may be confined to four features of the age —the search for means to impose a sense of responsibility on commanders in the field; the revelation by Glaucia and Saturninus of the dangers which would arise when the constitutio methods of the Gracchi found followers without seruples or ideals; the entry into politics of Marius—the first Roman who made military prowess a claim to direct the civil government and the earliest precursor of the soldier-emperors of the third century a.p.; and, finally, the preliminaries to the upheaval which ended with the enfranchisement of the Italians. These are the significant aspects of the story: the ups and downs of fortune in the petty struggle between the Senate and its rivals are incidents tor which the briefest notice will suffice. The scandals of the wars in Africa and the North presented a problem unknown before. The dearth of competent commanders and the low standard of morality which now pervaded public life had produced a whole series of generals who must at all costs be taught a lesson pour encourager des autres. Men in high places must learn the simple truth that the privilege of office involved obliga- tions to the State. A beginning had been made by the Mamilian commission (p. 121), which was at least a reminder that corruption could not be tolerated; but the energy of that court had failed to impress on those whom it most concerned the further fact that wilful gambling with the interests of Rome, whether through personal ambition or indolent neglect of the most obvious pre- cautions, was culpable to a degree deserving punishment. Carbo, the victim of Noreia, had forestalled by death any formal pro- nouncement on his conduct; but his successors in misfortune— Silanus, Caepio and Mallius—awaited a condemnation which,