Lucius Appuleius Saturninus (died late 100 BC) was a Roman populist and tribune. He is most notable for introducing a series of legislative reforms, alongside his associate Gaius Servilius Glaucia and with the consent of Gaius Marius, during the last years of the second century BC. Senatorial opposition to these laws eventually led to an internal crisis, the declaration of the senatus consultum ultimum, and the deaths of Saturninus, Glaucia, and their followers in 100 BC.
The lex Appuleia agraria was a Roman agrarian law introduced by the plebeian tribune Lucius Appuleius Saturninus during his second tribunate in 100 BC. The law concerned the distribution of land to poor Romans and to Gaius Marius' veterans. According to Appian, this was to be provided from land that had been seized by the Cimbri in Transalpine Gaul. A separate but related law also established colonies Sicily, Achaea, Macedonia, and possibly Africa.
The law also required the swearing of an oath to follow it. Some senators, including Quintus Caecilius Metellus Numidicus, refused to take the oath and therefore departed into exile. Although Saturninus was an ally of Marius, his activities during the elections of 100 BC – including a murder of a hostile candidate – triggered a senatus consultum ultimum which saw him apprehended and his death to a mob in the senate house. Despite Saturninus' death, his land reforms were not overturned.
A lex agraria (pl.: leges agrariae) was a Roman law which dealt primarily with the viritane allotment of public lands. Such laws came largely from two sources: the disposition of lands annexed by Rome in consequence of expansion and the distribution of existing public lands to poor citizens as freeholds. Such legislation dealt almost exclusively with public lands which were held by the state and not privately owned. There were other types of Roman laws related to agriculture, including those establishing new colonies and those regulating the holding of public lands (lex de modo agrorum).
The most famous lex agraria was that of the plebeian tribune Tiberius Gracchus, passed in 133 BC, which allotted public lands across Italy to rural plebs. Such laws were not without precedent, such as the lex Flaminia of 232 BC which authorised viritane distributions of lands in Cisalpine Gaul and Picenum. Further such laws were also passed in the years after 133 BC, including that of Tiberius' younger brother Gaius in 122 BC, and the epigraphically attested lex agraria of 111 BC. The law of 111 BC, among other things, buttressed recognition of the lands distributed in the prior law of 133. Other leges agrariae include a series of three laws vaguely described by Appian, the laws of Saturninus in 103 and 100 BC, the laws of Julius Caesar in 59 BC, and a law of Mark Antony in 44 BC.