During his year in office, Drusus proposed wide-ranging legislative reforms, including offering citizenship to Rome's Italian allies.
The failure of these reforms, and Drusus' subsequent murder at the hands of an unknown assassin in late 91 BC, are often seen as an immediate cause of the Social War.
[12] After the death of his father, Drusus inherited vast amounts of wealth, with which he paid for grand gladiatorial shows during his aedileship, possibly in 94 BC.
[17] Hostile propaganda later portrayed him as a demagogue from the outset of his tribunate, but Cicero and others assert that he began with the aim of strengthening senatorial rule and had the backing of the senate.
[17] This included the princeps senatus, Marcus Aemilius Scaurus, who had been the colleague of Drusus' father in the censorship of 109 BC; and Lucius Licinius Crassus, the most influential orator of the day.
[18] However, not all of his senatorial allies agreed with his proposals: "the most obviously negative aspect of [Drusus' legislative] programme... was the unacceptable personal power which he would have achieved".
[20] In 122 BC, Gaius Gracchus had made the juries for these courts (Latin, quaestio de repetundis) composed entirely of wealthy equites instead of senators.
[21][22] This gave the equestrians great judicial power, a fact resented by many senators, many of whom found the loss of their forensic role humiliating.
However, despite the famous support of Lucius Crassus, this Lex Servilia was replaced after only two years by a law of Gaius Servilius Glaucia which restored the equestrian monopoly.
They had famously opposed the rapacity of the equestrian businessmen operating in the province, gaining much praise from the provincials and the Senate but hostility from the equites.
The injustice of the affair was compounded by Rutilius Rufus' calm, Stoical acceptance of his fate, and his case was long a byword for unjust sentences.
[38] Despite support from notable backers, Drusus' legislation attracted powerful opposition, including the consul Lucius Marcius Philippus.
On the day of voting, Philippus tried to stop proceedings, and was only deterred when one of Drusus' supporters throttled the consul to the point that he started bleeding.
[39][40] When Caepio continued to oppose the legislation, Drusus threatened to have the praetor hurled from the Tarpeian Rock, an archaic punishment for treasonable magistrates.
[41] Eventually, Drusus passed his legislation by combining all the various bills into one law – a practice that had been banned several years previously under the terms of the lex Caecilia Didia.
[62] In this tense climate of political disputes, alleged assassination plots, and Italian discontent, Philippus finally succeeded in persuading the Senate to abolish all of Drusus' legislation.
The justification was twofold: firstly, that the laws had been passed in contravention of the sacred auspices, meaning they were contrary to the will of the gods;[63] and secondly, that they had contravened the Lex Caecilia Didia of 98 BC.
[69][70] Philippus and Caepio were blamed by some for the assassination,[71] as was Quintus Varius Hybrida, the tribune of 90 BC who later created a special court to prosecute Drusus' supporters.
[76][77][78] Thus Drusus' original position as champion of the Senate was forgotten by these authors, who instead emphasised the turbulence of his tribunate and his role in the start of the Social War.
Though accepting that his promises to the Italians in the year 91 BC directly precipitated the outbreak of the Social War, many modern scholars are more forgiving of Drusus.
[79][80] Theodore Mommsen considered him a genuine reformer, a progressive who attempted to resolve some of the most pressing issues of the day in an age when few others were willing to do likewise.
Through his adopted son, he became an ancestor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty; and through the two marriages of his sister, Livia, he was uncle to Cato the Younger and great-uncle to Marcus Junius Brutus.