Lex Caecilia Didia - Political Background

Political Background

The Lex Caecilia Didia was a direct response to the events of 100 BCE and an attempt to reduce hasty legislation passed in the comitia. In that year, Gaius Marius gained his sixth term as consul. Under Marius, the popularist tribune Saturninus and the praetor Glaucia proposed and passed liberal land laws assigning land in the province of Africa to Marius’s veterans. However, the radical nature of these bills and the forcible methods Saturninus and Glaucia used in ensuring their passage alienated a large part of the Roman people and eventually even Marius. As a result Saturninus’s laws were repealed, and the Lex Caecilia Didia was introduced. The goal was to curb the passage of radical bills, with the assumption that the period of trinundium would give the citizens time to understand the proposed law or to be persuaded to vote against it.