The emerging trend of xenophobia in the 2nd and 1st centuries BC led to the increasing marginalisation of Italians who, as Rome's primary fighters and tax payers, sought partnership and not subjection.
To the other allies, who were not allowed to vote in Roman elections, he sought to give the right of suffrage, in order to have their help in the enactment of laws which he had in contemplation.
Lucius Appuleius Saturninus and Gaius Servilius Glaucia tried to reintroduce the Gracchi legislation but their acts were also shut down and they were lynched.
In the aftermath, Gaius Marius granted citizenship to those Italian soldiers leading to a surge of new questions regarding national identity.
At any rate, while in war he had authority and power because his services were needed, yet in civil life his leadership was more abridged, and he therefore had recourse to the goodwill and favour of the multitude, not caring to be the best man if only he could be the greatest.
This mention of the creation of the lex Licinia Mucia by Cicero demonstrates that the law was really directed at a specific group of non-citizens who disrupted an aristocrat's public speech, something which Scaurus felt to be an intrusion on his rights as an elite Roman citizen.
The Consuls for the year 95 were Lucius Licinius Crassus and Quintus Mucius Scaevola and it was they who gave their names to the lex Licinia Mucia.
When the Consul Quintus Servilius Caepio sought to legislate to allow members of the Senate to serve on juries, thereby ending the monopoly of the equestrian class, Crassus made a speech so fiery in support of the lex Servilla that it was considered an exemplar of Roman oratory.
[11] Before his death in 91 BC Crassus had modified his position on Roman citizenship in so far at least that he appeared to concede its practical necessity, provided a proper legal framework was in place.
[12] The second man responsible for the lex Licinia Mucia, Quintus Mucius Scaevola, became, in the years following the Consulship of 95, the governor of the Roman Asia province.
[18] Thus, whilst the law operated in practical terms of legal prosecution, it was also used as a rhetorical device, particularly by Cicero, to criticise the scrutiny of citizenship.
assembling ten thousand men drawn from the ranks of those who had occasion to fear judicial investigations, he led them to Rome, with swords concealed beneath their garb of peace.
It was his intention to surround the senate with armed men and demand the citizenship or, if persuasion failed, to ravage the seat of empire with fire and sword.
[23] The humiliation that flogging imposed upon the victim, especially one forced to leave Rome, suggests that this act was a possible punishment for those transgressing the lex Licinia Mucia.
This murder was born from the long history of tensions between Romans and allies and was the cause of the first Italian revolt[26] that led to the Bellum Italicum.