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They resolved on the latter course; Saturninus would come forward once more as a candidate for the tribunate of the people for 655, Glaucia, although praetor and not eligible for the consulship till two years had elapsed, would become a candidate for the latter.
Accordingly Marius formed a design to eject Metellus from the city; and for this purpose he allied himself with Glaucia and Saturninus, who were daring men, and had at their command a rabble of needy and noisy fellows, and he made them his tools in introducing his measures.
The man of popular sympathies whose measures attracted their support was tolerably certain of success, and the man who posed as the champion of the order was still more firmly placed. The latter position was occupied for a considerable time by Caius Servilius Glaucia, whose tribunate probably belongs to the close of the period which we are describing.
Without orders the youth of rank climbed the roof of the senate-house in the Forum where the prisoners were temporarily confined, stripped off the tiles, and with these stoned their victims. Thus Saturninus perished with most of the more notable prisoners. Glaucia was found in a lurking-place and likewise put to death.
He had excited a tumult against the conqueror of Numidia, Quintus Metellus, when he was a candidate for the censorship in 652, and kept him besieged in the Capitol till the equites liberated him not without bloodshed; the retaliatory measure of the censor Metellus the expulsion with infamy of Saturninus and of Glaucia from the senate on occasion of the revision of the senatorial roll had only miscarried through the remissness of the colleague assigned to Metellus.
On the popular side there were two parties: a moderate one, represented by Memmius, who, as tribune, had impeached the senators for the Jugurthine infamies; the other, the advanced radicals, led by Glaucia and Saturninus. Memmius and Glaucia were both candidates for the consulship; and as Memmius was likely to succeed, he was murdered.
Saturninus and Glaucia sought to control the more important consular election by the expedient for the removal of inconvenient competitors which had been tried in the previous year; the counter-candidate of the government party, Gaius Memmius the same who eleven years before had led the opposition against them was suddenly assailed by a band of ruffians and beaten to death.
This law was no doubt meant to recover the favour of the city mob, which he had forfeited by his agrarian law. It seems at any rate certain that of these laws the agrarian was the chief, and the others subsidiary; in other words, that he and Glaucia were working together on an organized plan, and striving to admit the whole Roman world into a community of rights with Rome.
On the popular side there were two parties: a moderate one, represented by Memmius, who, as tribune, had impeached the senators for the Jugurthine infamies; the other, the advanced radicals, led by Glaucia and Saturninus. Memmius and Glaucia were both candidates for the consulship; and as Memmius was likely to succeed, he was murdered.
Saturninus and Glaucia were from the first masters and servants of the proletariate and therefore not at all on a good footing with the moneyed aristocracy, which had no objection now and then to keep the senate in check by means of the rabble, but had no liking for street-riots and violent outrages.
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