(1) to relieve the provincials, by making prosecutions for extortion easy, and even putting a premium on them; (2) to conciliate the equites; (3) to pave the way for the overthrow of class jurisdiction by, nominally at least, leaving the judicia open to all who did not come under specified restrictions.  Cicero inveighs against Glaucia as a demagogue of the Hyperbolus stamp.  But there was more of the statesman than the demagogue in this law.

When Saturninus was a candidate for the tribunate, he and Glaucia are said to have set on men to murder Nonius, another candidate, who they feared might use his veto to thwart their projects.  Marius had been previously elected consul, and supported Saturninus in his candidature, as Saturninus had supported him. [Sidenote:  Personal reasons for Marius joining Saturninus.] Marius may have been induced to enter into this alliance by the desire to gratify a personal grudge, for the rival candidate had been the man he most detested, Q. Metellus; and the first measure of Saturninus was a compliment to him and a direct blow aimed at Metellus. [Sidenote:  Agrarian law of Saturninus.] This was an agrarian law which would benefit the Marian veterans; and as it contained a proviso that any senator refusing to swear to observe it within five days should be expelled from the Senate, it would be sure to drive Metellus from Rome.  But if there was diplomacy in this measure of Saturninus, there was sagacity also.  What discontent was seething in Italy the Social War soon proved, and this was an attempt to appease it.  Saturninus had previously proposed allotments in Africa; now he proposed to allot lands in Transalpine Gaul, Sicily, Achaia, and Macedonia, and to supply the colonists with an outfit from the treasure taken from Tolosa.  Marius was to have the allotment of the land. [Sidenote:  Difficulty about this agrarian law.] There is a difficulty as to these colonies which no history solves.  They were Roman colonies to which only Roman citizens were eligible, and yet the Roman populace opposed the law.  The Italians, on the contrary, carried it by violence.  Some have cut the knot by supposing that, though the colonies were Roman, Italians were to be admitted to them.  But there is another possible explanation.  It is certain that many Italians passed as citizens at Rome.  In 187 B.C. 12,000 Latins, passing as Roman citizens, had been obliged to quit Rome.  In 95 B.C. there was another clearance of aliens, which was one of the immediate causes of the Social War.  Fictitious citizens might have found it easy to obtain allotments from a consul whose ears, if first made deaf by the din of arms, had never since recovered their hearing.  However this may be, it was the rural party which by violence procured a preponderance of votes at the ballot-boxes, and it was the town populace which resisted what it felt to be an invasion of its prerogative by the men from the country. [Sidenote:  Exile of Metellus.] Marius is said to have got rid of Metellus by a trick.  He pretended that he would not take the oath which the law demanded, but, when Metellus had said the same thing, told the Senate that he would swear to obey the law as far as it was a law, in order to induce the rural voters to leave Rome, and Metellus, scorning such a subterfuge, went into exile.