To the former sort belonged, for instance, Gaius Memmius( 5) and the well-known orator Lucius Crassus, who turned the oratorical laurels which they had won in the ranks of the opposition to account in the sequel as zealous partisans of the government.
Glaucia Saturninus But the most notable leaders of the popular party about this time were men of the second sort.

Such were Gaius Servilius Glaucia, called by Cicero the Roman Hyperbolus, a vulgar fellow of the lowest origin and of the most shameless street-eloquence, but effective and even dreaded by reason of his pungent wit; and his better and abler associate, Lucius Appuleius Saturninus, who even according to the accounts of his enemies was a fiery and impressive speaker, and was at least not guided by motives of vulgar selfishness.

When he was quaestor, the charge of the importation of corn, which had fallen to him in the usual way, had been withdrawn from him by decree of the senate, not so much perhaps on account of maladministration, as in order to confer this--just at that time popular--office on one of the heads of the government party, Marcus Scaurus, rather than upon an unknown young man belonging to none of the ruling families.

This mortification had driven the aspiring and sensitive man into the ranks of the opposition; and as tribune of the people in 651 he repaid what he had received with interest.
One scandalous affair had at that time followed hard upon another.
He had spoken in the open market of the briberies practised in Rome by the envoys of king Mithradates--these revelations, compromising in the highest degree the senate, had wellnigh cost the bold tribune his life.

He had excited a tumult against the conqueror of Numidia, Quintus Metellus, when he was a candidate for the censorship in 652, and kept him besieged in the Capitol till the equites liberated him not without bloodshed; the retaliatory measure of the censor Metellus--the expulsion with infamy of Saturninus and of Glaucia from the senate on occasion of the revision of the senatorial roll--had only miscarried through the remissness of the colleague assigned to Metellus.