the track of Marius: whither the Tigurini went, we cannot tell. To
judge from an expression of the epitomizers, the barbarians--a fact
which Plutarch does not mention--must have taken the camp of Marius;
but this could not have been the one near the ground where the battle
was fought, as from the march towards it, and the whole of Marius’
disposition, we may see that he had been stopped when retreating. He
had therefore to encamp in a spot where there was no water, and the
soldiers were obliged to go out armed and fetch it from a distant
well; so that they asked to be led out to fight. Marius wished first
to entrench himself, as his foes were quite close, and everything was
against him; yet he could not carry out his intention, the distress
being so great that the camp-followers in despair went to some water
which was in the neighbourhood of the enemy. Here the Ambrones attacked
them, on which the soldiers came to their help: the Ligurians first
set out, and then cohort after cohort hastened up, without any orders
from Marius. Thus an engagement was brought on, in which, strange to
say, the Teutones took no share whatever: perhaps they had not yet
come up. Even in this conflict, a brilliant victory was gained, most
of the Ambrones being destroyed; notwithstanding which, the Romans,
who were without entrenchments, now passed an anxious night in which
they were busily throwing up works. The next battle was not fought on
the following day, as had been expected, but on the day after; most
likely because the Teutones and the rest of the Ambrones had only
just now arrived. Marius laid all his plans with the talent of a true
general, and he sent M. Claudius Marcellus--a man whose family was
always distinguished, he being undoubtedly a grandson of that worthy
Marcellus so well known in the Iberian war, who had five times been
consul--with a division of allies, as it would seem, to attack the
enemy’s rear. Yet even before this, the fury of the Teutones had spent
itself in vain against the steadfastness and dogged resolution of the
Romans, and the more so as it was summer: for the men of the South,
owing to their more muscular frame, are able to stand both heat and
frost better than others: the Italians in Napoleon’s Russian campaign,
suffered much less than the northern nations did. And therefore, as
one might easily believe, the natives of Rome bore the glowing heat of
the sun much better than the Teutones. The Romans, who were posted on
a hill, awaited the onset of the barbarians; these were beaten back,
and when they were endeavouring to rally in the plain, Marcellus fell
upon them from behind. Part of them tried to make their escape, and
were overpowered and slain by the Gallic tribes. The prince of the
Teutones was taken prisoner by the Sequani, and the remnant of his army
retreated within their rampart of waggons; but the Romans now broke in,
and nearly the whole of the nation was destroyed, some very few only
being made slaves.
Half of the danger was now warded off. Soon afterwards, the Cimbri
burst upon Italy through Tyrol and the Alps of Trent; and this was
not from any fault of Catulus, but it was altogether owing to their
overwhelming numbers, and the terror which they spread far and wide.
The account in Florus of the manner in which the Cimbri opened the
way for themselves, is quite childish; just as if these had been the
dullest of savages, and had wanted to stop the tide of the Adige with
their hands: this shows what a _homo umbraticus_ that writer was. There
are indeed some fords in the Adige, and in passing such a river one
makes the cavalry cross higher up, and somewhat lower down a close
column of infantry, which will break the force of a moderate stream.
This the Cimbri may also have tried to do, thinking perhaps that with
their huge bodies they would be able to stem the flood; but in the
Adige, as it is near Legnano, such a thing is impossible. Afterwards
they are said to have thrown trees into the river to dam it up; which
is also incredible. They wished rather to have a bridge and to destroy
that of the Romans by means of their floats of timbers, and this they
succeeded in doing. The Romans being posted at each end of the bridge,
on both sides of the stream, one of their two divisions was cut off
from the other, and was obliged to surrender to the Cimbri; but these,
with unwonted humanity, let it go free. This, however, is true, that in
crossing the most impassable parts of the Alps, they glided on their
large shields, as on sleighs, down the steepest declivities. At this
irruption, Catulus fell back as far as the Po, or yet beyond it: the
whole country north of that river was laid waste; the towns of Mantua,
Verona, Brescia, which were left to the protection of their walls,
defended themselves; but the open places were destroyed. From the
winter to the following summer, the Cimbri most unaccountably remained
on that side of the Po.
Marius heard in Gaul of the irruption of the barbarians, and he ordered
his army to march to Genua in Liguria (as it would seem), and went
himself to Rome. Here every one was now full of admiration for him;
and the feeling that he was the only man who could save the country,
was become so general, that even the oligarchs were for his being made
consul for the fifth time. People were so eager to gain his goodwill,
that they offered him a triumph; but this he declined until he should
have destroyed the Cimbri, and his assurance communicated itself to
every one. He accordingly united his army with that of Catulus, who
had remained in command as proconsul. They both of them now passed the
Po with somewhat more than fifty-two thousand men. It is said that the
Cimbri knew nothing of the defeat of the Teutones; which is a downright
absurdity, as it is impossible that from autumn to the end of July,
they should not have got any news. It was surely for this very reason,
that they asked Marius for land and places of abode, as they felt
that half of their power had been overthrown: if they also demanded
this for their brethren, these must have been the Tigurini. Whether
the Cimbri now wished to secure the passes to Gaul, that they might
keep the road over the little St. Bernard open for any emergency, and
this was why they came to Vercellæ, is uncertain; yet notwithstanding
all the variations in the readings, there seems to be no doubt that
a battle was fought near Vercelli on the declivity of the Alps: for
one cannot see how any body should have thought of placing it in this
corner of Lombardy. Writers call the spot _Campi Raudii_. The battle,
contrary to the Roman custom, was announced three days beforehand, and
on the third day before the calends of the Sextilis (July 29th as the
calendar was then), it was fought. So much time had the Cimbri spent
in their ravages since the beginning of winter, in this unwholesome
aguish country, where the water is so bad: epidemics also had already
broken out among them. On the day of the battle, Marius put the army of
Catulus in the centre, disposing his own on the two wings: the account
of it, which is found in Plutarch only, is so confused, that nothing
distinct can be made out of it. It is incredible that the Cimbri should
have formed a great square, each side of which was three-quarters of
a (German) mile long, the men in the outside ranks having, as we are
told, their girdles linked together with chains: such a mass would
amount to many millions of men. Marius is said to have so placed his
troops that the sun and the wind were in the faces of the barbarians;
such a thing may be history, or it may be fiction. Catulus had to
stand the brunt of the battle; at least the fight was hottest where he
was: and yet it was only a proof of party spirit, when people disputed
whether it was to Marius or to Catulus that the victory was due; for it
seems beyond all doubt that Marius decided the battle in the wings, and
thus had the chief merit of it. The Cimbrians fled within their rampart
of waggons, where even the women and children fought, and killed
themselves at last: a great many were taken prisoners, as the Alps
blocked up their retreat. In short, every thing belonging to the Cimbri
which had crossed these mountains, was cut off, all but the tribe of
the Aduatici, who had settled hereabouts,[84] on the Lower Rhine, where
they must therefore have had fixed abodes at one time.
As a reward for his unexampled achievements, Marius had now his sixth
consulship given him. He led the most brilliant triumph which any
general had ever had; but even then he already showed how much his head
was turned, as he entered the senate in his triumphal garments. There
was a belief that some one before him had been six times consul; but
this can no longer be ascertained, as the ancients themselves could not
tell. Perhaps Valerius Corvus was six times consul; it may, however,
have been, that in what is accounted his sixth consulship, one of his
family was mistaken for him. Marius was called the third founder of
Rome after Romulus and Camillus. But this consulship, although Marius
at last became useful to the state, had such dismal consequences, as
to make one wish that he had died on the day of his triumph: then his
memory would have been glorious and blessed, and he would have thrown
even Scipio into the shade.
MARIUS’ SIXTH CONSULSHIP. L. APULEIUS SATURNINUS. C. SERVILIUS GLAUCIA.
Marius was not the man who could play his part well in quiet, peaceful
times; and yet Rome was hastening towards dissolution in a way which
compelled him to act. There are very many kinds of courage, as the
greatest men have owned; there is a courage with regard to danger,
which either looks death in the face with indifference, or forgets
it altogether in the excitement of action. This is a fine quality in
itself; but it does not follow, that the motive for its display should
be as noble: he alone in whom this constancy is allied to a pure mind,
and who is conscious of a lofty aim, will enjoy with it the full sense
of personal freedom, and be enabled to achieve great things. Many are
wanting in this sort of prowess, who yet possess a determined moral
courage, owing to which they hold themselves above the opinion of those
around them, it being all the same to them whether they be misjudged
or not; others, who in the hour of danger show the courage of lions,
are exceedingly timid in this respect, and afraid of acting up to a
conviction which has been branded by the world’s anathema. It was in
this latter sense that Marius was weak; for if one was to say that he
let himself be used as a tool by the men who exercised such influence
during his sixth consulship, this would be making him out to have been
a most pitiful wretch; whereas it is the clue to his conduct, that he
was at one time afraid of the demagogues, and at another of the senate,
a deplorable, although partial, weakness of a great man who had no
greatness of character.
Marius had joined himself with a sad knave, to get his sixth
consulship. This was L. Apuleius Saturninus, who, undeservedly enough,
is often named with the Gracchi, although there cannot be a wider
interval than that between them and Saturninus. He was a man like
Catiline, one indeed of whom the like is seldom seen; for though one
can understand how ambition will lead people blindfold into acts of
dangerous daring, yet how a man could have taken in his head to be
so mad, is all but incomprehensible. It would seem that his was a
revolutionary mind; that he formed no clear notion of what things would
come to, being utterly regardless of institutions and government, and
only thinking of violence and confusion. He had sprung from one of
the richest and most eminent plebeian families; just as in the French
revolution, men of the first nobility put themselves at the head of
the rabble. I do not recollect whether it is of him, or of Servilius
Glaucia, that Cicero says, that no one had been gifted with a more
malignant wit:[85] it was by this means that they managed the people.
He had started in life as an aristocrat. There were at that time eight
quæstorships, which were given partly to consulars, and partly to other
persons. They were places with an income attached to them, one of them
being the _quæstura Ostiensis_, which had the charge of the granaries
at Rome. Saturninus had, as quæstor, availed himself of the privilege
of _peculatus_ taken by the men of rank; but when the tables were
suddenly turned, and the oligarchs were no longer able to screen the
sins of their own body, owing to an honest party having been formed
from both factions under the lead of the straight-forward C. Memmius,
he got liable to the punishment of being deposed, and so he threw
himself into the arms of the mob: it was a conspiracy of the dregs of
the upper and middle classes. He now became a tribune of the people,
and behaved in the most savage manner towards the very first men, for
instance, the censors and others. When, on his standing the second
time for the tribuneship, another candidate, A. Nonius was set up
against him, he so hounded on the rabble against that unfortunate man,
that they murdered him; and thus he made himself by force a tribune
again. The magistrates had no more any authority; those who had the
power, did just what they liked.
His accomplice was C. Servilius Glaucia, like him a man of very high
rank, not a freedman, as might be inferred from his name: in a similar
manner, a Scipio was nicknamed Serapio, from an actor to whom he bore
a likeness. What these two really wanted, is hard to say: if their
madness went even to utter recklessness, it might be assumed that they
aimed at a tyranny for one of them; but if they believed that Marius
would allow such a thing, this were just as great an insanity as that
of the drunkard in Shakspeare’s Tempest. We must deem many of the
men of that time to have been downright madmen. Of Robespierre also,
it can never be said what purpose he had;--very likely he had none
whatever. Thus also one of these men wanted to rule, no matter how,
and for what end. When now Apuleius was tribune, Marius was consul for
the sixth time. It was then that the former really began his career
as a legislator, trying to win the favour of the people by a set of
seditious motions: his aims were quite different from those which in
earlier days were called seditious; he was striving to establish a
tyranny, a design indeed which only a general, like Sylla or Cæsar,
could have succeeded in carrying out. The legislation of Saturninus,
however, has come down to us very obscure: thus much we know, that a
most sweeping agrarian law was one of its main features, and that he
changed the giving out of corn into a regular distribution of alms.
It would seem as if the whole of the lands to be divided by his _Lex
agraria_, were situated in Transpadane Gaul; for that they should have
been in France itself, is not likely. He is said also to have made a
_Lex judiciaria_. He now flattered Marius in every possible way. He
wanted to found colonies, and the _coloni_ were to consist of Romans
and Italians: for as the Italian allies in the army of Marius, had also
very much distinguished themselves, Apuleius favoured them as much as
the Romans, and this was what exasperated many of the poorer Roman
citizens against the law. Marius was moreover to have the power of
giving in each of these colonies the Roman citizenship to three Italian
allies, a thing which indeed went beyond all bounds of civil authority.
Yet though at that time this was still something quite monstrous, as it
trenched upon some of the rights of the sovereign people, no umbrage
was taken afterwards when an _imperator_ bestowed the citizenship.
These laws were opposed, both on account of their author and their
evident tendency, by all right-minded men, even by those who in former
days had with all their might withstood the oligarchy; and likewise by
the broken-down oligarchs themselves, who now wanted no more than what
was reasonable. Hence it was that C. Memmius became the object of the
rage of the seditious, though twelve years before, when tribune, he had
called upon the people to quell the oligarchy: he had only behaved, as
he ever did, like an honest man.
Owing to the Hortensian law, the new _lex agraria_ did not require the
sanction of the senate. That that body, however, might not afterwards
attack it, Saturninus demanded that the senators should swear to it
five days after its adoption by the tribes: and when this was debated
in the senate, Marius at first declared, that it ought not to be
done; that he would not take the oath, and that he hoped that every
well-disposed person would follow his example. It was thought that
he acted thus from craftiness, to draw in his enemies, particularly
Metellus, to refuse the oath likewise: nor is this impossible. But he
may also have honestly meant what he said, though afterwards false
friends began to work upon him by means of his unhappy dread of the
mob. Cicero had the strength of mind not to allow himself to be thus
overawed; he says in a speech of his (_pro Rabirio perduell._) _nihil
me clamor iste commovet, sed consolatur, quum indicat esse quosdam
cives imperitos, sed non multos_. Neither Plutarch nor Appian have
thrown any light upon this subject. At the end of all the laws, there
is the following formula, _si quid sacri sanctique est quod non jus sit
rogari, ejus hac lege nihil rogatur_; or else, _si quid jus non esset
rogarier ejus ea lege nihilum rogatum_.[86] These unlucky advisers now
said that, if the law was not passed, blood would flow; but that if it
were passed, this clause would give protection against everything in
the body of the enactment which was thus made null and void. By such
casuistry as this, they got Marius to declare on the fifth day in the
senate, that even if they took the oath, they would still have this
loophole left them. Thus the oath was taken by Marius, and after him by
all the rest, except Q. Metellus Numidicus, who stood out against it
with a constancy truly heroic, which does him greater honour than his
Numidian victories, and which would lead one to pardon his haughtiness
to Marius. In the day of trial, he showed a resolute consistency,
and Saturninus, persisting in the course which he had taken, had him
dragged out of the senate by his _viator_, and outlawed him (_aqua
et igni interdicebat_); on which he went as an exile to Rhodes. The
year was passed in horrors. The stain upon Marius’ character is his
weakness: from henceforth he always stands in an undecided position,
trimming between both factions; and thus he saw himself dependent upon
the very storms which surrounded him. As good luck would have it, these
fellows carried things so far, that they brought about a fusion of
parties, and Marius himself, not wanting to have any more to do with
them, was ready to declare against them.
The elections for the consulship were now held, and M. Antonius was
unanimously chosen. On the following day, it seemed certain that
C. Memmius would be elected: he was one of the most energetic and
right-minded men of that age, being probably the tribune in Jugurtha’s
time, or if not the same, at least a very near kinsman of his. Against
this candidate, who was all but returned, Glaucia and Saturninus raised
a tumult: they did not, however, venture to have him assailed in the
open market-place; but when he fled into a booth, he was murdered in
it. This was too bad to be borne; and Marius was applied to, who when
he received the command from the senate, _ut videret ne quid detrimenti
res publica caperet_, resolved to uphold the cause of order against
the outrages of miscreants: he now called upon the _equites_ and all
respectable citizens. In this peril, it was seen how the great might
likewise in other times have warded off many things, had they only
had the spirit to make a stand. When the rebels found that all were
turning against them, they withdrew to the Capitol, and there they were
besieged. Marius now showed himself a good general. The _clivus_ was
taken, and the culprits sheltered themselves within the strong walls of
the Capitoline temple, which it was looked upon as a crime to storm.
As the water was conveyed thither by the pipes of the _aqua Marcia_,
Marius ordered them to be cut off; so that the besieged must have
perished from hunger and thirst. That most ancient well, therefore,
which had supplied the Romans with water in the days of the Gallic
invasion, must already at this time have been in the same state that it
is now: it is altogether neglected, and every kind of filth is thrown
into it. Glaucia was for setting fire to the temple, and thus dying;
but the others, who had hopes of saving their lives, would not do this,
and they surrendered at discretion. The most guilty were shut up in
the Curia Hostilia, that they might be brought to justice. Yet either
there was a change of feeling in the populace, or else the government,
not to bring upon themselves the odium of putting so many men of rank
to death, got up a sham riot: the roof of the Curia was scaled, and
from thence the rebels were slain by the rioters. Marius’ conduct now
reconciled to him men’s minds again; he retraced some of his steps, and
even agreed to have Metellus recalled from banishment. Saturninus’ laws
seem to have been repealed, as those of Livius were afterwards.
Thus ended this insurrection, which indeed is best understood by
Velleius Paterculus. Marius for his own part retired into private life,
and he had not a thought of making himself a tyrant.
M. LIVIUS DRUSUS.
The republic was shaken to its very centre, the great point of contest
being the administration of justice. The _equites_ had so abused their
power as judges, that they had public opinion against them: this was
partly owing to their jealousy against the senate, and partly on
account of their quarrels with individual senators in the provinces.
The system of general farmers of the revenue had become more and more
developed; the companies had leases of the mines, customs, tithes, and
such like things, and some of them put their money out to usury; and
they exacted from the people in the provinces much more than these were
bound to give. They had again their sub-farmers; thus for instance,
the _publicans_ in the gospel were the agents of the _publicani_. The
same thing is done to this day. The contract for feeding the galley
slaves, was only a short time since given by the Roman government to an
actress, who had a very fair price paid to her for it, so much a head
being allowed her; but she sublet the contract to others, each making a
trifling profit on it, down to the very last of them, and the prisoners
were literally all but starved. If a consul or proconsul had ground the
people in the provinces, and screened the _publicani_, he was safe at
Rome when prosecuted; but if a man who was just and blameless thwarted
the revenue farmers in their exactions, they would revenge themselves
by charging him with extortion, and get a verdict against him by means
of false witnesses. This was the fate of P. Rutilius, and it excited
universal indignation. It was impossible to find any check for this, as
each one always supported the rest. The ill-blood which there was at
that time between the senate and the knights, is to be found among all
nations, at a certain stage of their progress, between the land-owners
and the monied men; as is now the case throughout Europe. The senate,
the _optimates_, held the great bulk of the landed property; the
_equites_, on the other hand, possessed the capital with which the
great commercial speculations were carried on. Moreover there were in
Rome many circumstances under which monied property might be abused
to the detriment of the nation, and every one who belonged to the
government, was, owing to the ways in which the courts of justice were
constituted, at the mercy of the _equites_. With regard to all these
matters, Montesquieu, admirable as he generally is, is mistaken; and on
the whole, they have not been well explained by modern writers, though
they may be brought very clearly before our mind’s eye. There was now
an open war against the judicial power, stirred up by the tyranny of
the latter.