Marcus Livius Drusus the Younger, tribune of 91, is much featured in Colleen McCullough's The Grass Crown, our current read. He was the son of Marcus Livius Drusus, the tribune of 122, censor of 109, and adversary of Gaius Gracchus; nephew of Publius Rutilius Rufus; brother-in-law and later adversary of Quintus Servilius Caepio, son of the Gold of Tolosa; uncle of the half-siblings Servilia and Cato the Younger; and grandfather of the empress Livia – but knowledge of him is nonetheless sketchy and contradictory. It doesn't help that Livy's text survives in a limited form only.
Considered a conservative and on the side of the Senate, he did promulgate three controversial laws: a lex iudiciaria, most likely (the evidence is murky) the removal of the jury in the courts from the exclusive jurisdiction of the equites by splitting it between equites and senators, at the same time proposing to increase the numbers of a depleted Senate by admitting an equal number of equites; a lex frumentaria and lex agraria, the latter two in favor of the plebs. Pliny the Elder also mentions a monetary law. Originally, these bills had the support of most groups and individually of the princeps senatus M. Aemilius Scaurus and Marcus Crassus Orator, but this eroded, largely through the agitations of the consul L. Marcius Philippus and of Caepio, and the bills were annulled, even more so in the light of his fourth and final proposed law, a general franchise, i.e., citizenship, for all Italian Allies.
Arthur Keaveney, in Rome And The Unification Of Italy,
writes (2.2) that Drusus “it must be said, lacked the true killer
instinct” and in deference to the Senate did not veto the annulment of
his laws.
This, in combination with Drusus’ suspect friendship with the Marsic
leader Q. Poppaedius Silo, was the beginning of the end. Especially
as Drusus was accused of having accepted an oath of allegiance from the
Allied’s aristocracy, which would have gained him a huge clientèle.
This information comes from Diodorus Siculus (37.11), whose texts
unfortunately are not online – or if they are, I can't find them. H.H. Scullard, in From the Gracchi to Nero: A History of Rome from 133 BC to AD 86,
thinks it may not have been a genuine document, and Keaveney, though
he considers the oath “plausible,” tends to agree. This is almost the
only major deviation McCullough has of the later Drusus in her novel: the oath plays a rather large
part in her story. (Drusus in his earlier years of course lacks ancient sources, but is very imaginatively portrayed.)
Drusus was murdered in his house and the war with the Allies, the Socii, became inevitable.
JSTOR (limited access) has The Policy of Livius Drusus the Younger by P. A. Seymour, The English Historical Review , Vol. 29, No. 115 (Jul., 1914), pp. 417-425. The Drusus as seen there is basically the Drusus we see in the novel.
E-texts:
Appian: The Civil Wars Books 35,26
- at LacusCurtius
- at Perseus
Livy: Periochae 71-75 at livius.org
Velleius Paterculus: Roman History, Book II, 13-14, at LacusCurtius
