he proceeded to carry out the main design of Drusus, namely, the complete enfranchisement of the Italians. [Sidenote: Pro-Italian measure of Sulpicius.] This, perhaps, would be especially distasteful to the Julii, as superseding the Lex Julia and the Lex Plautia Papiria, which to them, no doubt, seemed ample and more than ample concessions. Sulpicius, on the other hand, and the minority of the Senate which sided with him, saw that under the cover of clemency a grievous wrong was being done. For not only were the Italians who had submitted since the terms of the Lex Plautia took effect without the franchise, but from the fact of their rebellion they had lost their old privileges as allied States. Even those who had benefited by these concessions had benefited only in name. As they voted in new tribes, their votes were valueless, and often would not be recorded at all; for a majority on most questions would be assured long before it came to their turn to vote. To a statesman imbued with the views of Drusus such a distribution of the franchise must have seemed impolitic trickery; and, like Drusus, Sulpicius resorted to questionable means in order to gain the end on which he had set his heart. Rome was thus broken up into two camps, not as of yore broadly marked off by palpable distinctions of rank, property, or privilege, but each containing adherents of all sorts and conditions, though in the Senate the opponents of Sulpicius had the majority. When Sulpicius proposed to enrol the Italians in the old tribes, the consuls proclaimed a justitium, or suspension of all public business for some religious observances. It is said by some modern writers that the object of Sulpicius in proposing to enrol the Italians in the old tribes was to secure the election of Marius to the command against Mithridates. It is certain, indeed, that Marius longed for it. [Sidenote: Attitude of Marius.] Daily he was to be seen in the Campus Martius exercising with the young men, and, though old and fat, showing himself nimble in arms and active on horseback--conduct which excited some men's good-humoured sympathy, but shocked others, who thought he had much better go to Baiae for the baths there, and that such an exhibition was contemptible in one of his years. Sulpicius may have thought Marius quite fit for the command, and was warranted in thinking so by the events of the Social War; but there is no more ground for supposing that the election of Marius was his primary object than for considering Plutarch's diatribe a fair estimate of his character. [Sidenote: Connection of Marius and Sulpicius explained.] He was the friend and successor of Drusus, and his alliance with Marius was a means to the end which in common with Drusus he had in view, and not the end itself. This consideration is essential to a true understanding of the politics of the time, and just makes the difference whether Sulpicius was a petty-minded adventurer or