DRUSUS, MarcusLivius, a patrician of the age of the Gracchi, and a colleague of Caius Gracchus in the tribuneship, 122 b.c. He was a creature of the senatorial party, and was employed by them to outbid the measures of the popular tribune. Gracchus had proposed to found three colonies outside Italy; Drusus provided twelve in Italy. Gracchus had proposed to distribute allotments to the poorer citizens subject to a state rent-charge; Drusus promised them free of all charge. Gracchus had proposed to give the Latins the citizenship; Drusus added immunity from corporal punishment, even in the field. The bait thus offered was swallowed; the people forsook their champion, who fell an easy victim to the hired bravos of Opimius. Drusus was rewarded for his services by the consulship, which he held, 112 b.c. He received Macedonia for his province, where he distinguished himself in a campaign against the Scordisci, whom he drove across the Danube into Dacia, being the first Roman general who reached that river. It is probable that he is the Drusus mentioned by Plutarch as having died in the year of his censorship, 109 b.c....
DRUSUS, Marcus Livius, son of the preceding, and, like his father, during the first part of his career a thorough supporter of the optimates. From his earliest youth he devoted himself to politics, was assiduous as a pleader in the law-courts, and lavished in gifts and shows the large fortune which he had inherited. By such popular acts ho rose to be tribune of the people, 91 b.c. In the agitation which was then raging for the transfer of the judicial functions from the equites to the senate, he proposed as a compromise a measure which restored to the senate their office of judges, while the numbers were doubled by the admission of 300 equites. But the senate was lukewarm, and the knights whose occupation was threatened offered the most violent opposition. In order, therefore, to catch the popular votes, he coupled with this measure others for the establishment of colonies in Italy and Sicily, and the distribution of corn at a reduced rate. By help of these riders the bill was carried, but not till its most factious opponent, the consul Philippus, had been arrested by Drusus and carried off to prison. To strengthen his hands Drusus now sought a closer alliance with the Italians, promising them the long coveted boon of the Roman franchise. The senate, who had before suspected his aims, broke out into open opposition. His laws were abrogated as informal, and each party armed its adherents for the civil struggle which was now inevitable. It was only prevented, or rather postponed, by the assassination of Drusus. One evening as he was returning to his house he was struck by a dagger, and fell at the foot of his father’s bust, exclaiming with his dying breath, “When will the republic find again a citizen like me?” His character is hard to decipher, and is one of the moot problems of Roman history. To some he has appeared an unscrupulous adventurer, who deserted his own order to gratify his selfish ambition; others have pronounced him the ablest and wisest of the Roman demagogues. That he was proud and ambitious there can be no question. When a quaestor in Asia he refuses to wear the robes of office, “ne quid ipso esset insignius.” When summoned before the senate he bids them come to him—“they will find me in the Curia Hostilia”—and they came. No less certain is it that the reforms he advocated were, on the whole, salutary and needful. The corruption of the equites was flagrant; the claims of the Italians to the franchise were just and pressing. Drusus was the Mirabeau of the social revolution of Rome, and had his measures been carried Rome might have been spared the most terrible of her civil wars.
[192 words — estimated reading time: 2 minutes]