f the country, when the most
respected of all aristocrats, for twenty years the chief of the senate,
Marcus Scaurus at seventy years of age was brought to trial for exactions;
a sacrilege according to aristocratic notions, even if he were guilty.
The office of accuser began to be exercised professionally by worthless
fellows, and neither irreproachable character, nor rank, nor age longer
furnished protection from the most wicked and most dangerous attacks.
The commission regarding exactions was converted from a shield of the
provincials into their worst scourge; the most notorious robber escaped
with impunity, if he only indulged his fellow-robbers and did not refuse
to allow part of the sums exacted to reach the jury; but any attempt
to respond to the equitable demands of the provincials for right and
justice sufficed for condemnation. It seemed as if the intention was to
bring the Roman government into the same dependence on the controlling
court, as that in which the college of judges at Carthage had formerly
held the council there. The prescient expression of Gaius Gracchus was
finding fearful fulfilment, that with the dagger of his law as to the
jurymen the world of quality would lacerate itself.

Livius Drusus

An attack on the equestrian courts was inevitable. Every one in the
government party who was still alive to the fact that governing implies
not merely rights but also duties, every one in fact who still felt any
nobler or prouder ambition within him, could not but rise in revolt
against this oppressive and disgraceful political control, which
precluded any possibility of upright administration. The scandalous
condemnation of Rutilius Rufus seemed a summons to begin the attack at
once, and Marcus Livius Drusus, who was tribune of the people in 663,
regarded that summons as specially addressed to himself. Son of the man
of the same name, who thirty years before had primarily caused the
overthrow of Gaius Gracchus(11) and had afterwards made himself a name
as an officer by the subjugation of the Scordisci,(12) Drusus was, like
his father, of strictly conservative views, and had already given
practical proof that such were his sentiments in the insurrection of
Saturninus. He belonged to the circle of the highest nobility, and was
the possessor of a colossal fortune; in disposition too he was a genuine
aristocrat--a man emphatically proud, who scorned to bedeck himself with
the insignia of his offices, bu