But the recent years, in which the senate once more ruled almost absolutely, had shed only too disagreeable a light on the designs of the Roman oligarchy also.

Instead of the expected modifications, there was issued in 659 a consular law which most strictly prohibited the non-burgesses from laying claim to the franchise and threatened transgressors with trial and punishment--a law which threw back a large number of most respectable persons who were deeply interested in the question of equalization from the ranks of Romans into those of Italians, and which in point of indisputable legality and of political folly stands completely on a parallel with that famous act which laid the foundation for the separation of North America from the mother-country; in fact it became, just like that act, the proximate cause of the civil war.

It was only so much the worse, that the authors of this law by no means belonged to the obstinate and incorrigible Optimates; they were no other than the sagacious and universally honoured Quintus Scaevola, destined, like George Grenville, by nature to be a jurist and by fate to be a statesman--who by his equally honourable and pernicious rectitude inflamed more than any one else first the war between senate and equites, and then that between Romans and Italians--and the orator Lucius Crassus, the friend and ally of Drusus and altogether one of the most moderate and judicious of the Optimates.
The Italians and Drusus Amidst the vehement ferment, which this law and the numerous processes arising out of it called forth throughout Italy, the star of hope once more appeared to arise for the Italians in the person of Marcus Drusus.

That which had been deemed almost impossible--that a conservative should take up the reforming ideas of the Gracchi, and should become the champion of equal rights for the Italians--had nevertheless occurred; a man of the high aristocracy had resolved to emancipate the Italians from the Sicilian Straits to the Alps and the government at one and the same time, and to apply all his earnest zeal, all his trusty devotedness to these generous plans of reform.
Whether he actually, as was reported, placed himself at the head of a secret league, whose threads ramified through Italy and whose members bound themselves by an oath( 8) to stand by each other for Drusus and for the common cause, cannot be ascertained; but, even if he did not lend himself to acts so dangerous and in fact unwarrantable for a Roman magistrate, yet it is certain that he did not keep to mere general promises, and that dangerous connections were formed in his name, although perhaps without his consent and against his will.

With joy the Italians heard that Drusus had carried his first proposals with the consent of the great majority of the senate; with still greater joy all the communities of Italy celebrated not long afterwards the recovery of the tribune, who had been suddenly attacked by severe illness.