“When Caius Gracchus fell,” said Mirabeau, “he seized a handful of dust
tinged with his blood and flung it toward the sky; from that dust was
born Marius.” This phrase of Mirabeau’s, though a whit rhetorical, is
historically true. The patricians were willing to cede nothing to the
Gracchi, and they were decimated by Marius. The struggle changed its
methods: one fought no more with laws as the only weapons, but yet
more with proscriptions. Marius was the incarnated pleb; as ignorant,
pitiless, formidable, he had something of Danton, except that Danton was
no soldier.[b]
Marius had taken no part hitherto in the old contentions of classes
at Rome. But his plebeian origin, the attitude of defiance he had
assumed towards the nobles on the occasion of his first election to the
consulship, the outrage he had done to establish usage in the enlistment
of proletarians, above all, perhaps, the arrogance with which he had
extorted so many successive consulships from the hands of the most
illustrious competitors, all combined to mark him as the champion of the
“movement party,” whatever its immediate objects or popular cry might be.
Under the shadow of his anti-oligarchical aggressions, the people and
their tribunes renewed the demands of the era of the Gracchi. The knights
were irritated by the loss of their monopoly of the judicia, and a cry
for a new agrarian distribution was always sure to interest a portion at
least of the multitude. But envy and spite against unpopular individuals
among the nobles were still more effective instruments to work with. Q.
Servilius Cæpio, who had been defeated by the Cimbrians, was selected
as an object of popular persecution. A few years before he had captured
Tolosa in Gaul by an act of signal treachery, such, however, as the
Romans seldom animadverted severely upon as long as they were successful.
But Cæpio had forfeited their forbearance by his recent disaster, and
the hoards of gold which he had rifled from the temples of the Gallic
deities were supposed to have brought the vengeance of Heaven upon
him, and the country whose armies were entrusted to him. The people,
at the instigation of their demagogues, proposed to deprive him of his
imperium, confiscate his property, and declare him incapable of serving
the state in future. The senate defended its luckless proconsul, who had
helped to restore to it a share in the judicia; but the tribune Vibius
Norbanus drove the nobles from the comitium, together with two of his
own colleagues who sided with them. In the tumult by which this act of
violence was consummated Æmilius Scaurus, the prince of the senate, was
wounded on the head by a stone. Cæpio was deprived, cast into prison and
subsequently banished, unless indeed, according to another account, he
was strangled in his dungeon. The retribution of his crime did not stop
here. His noble family was further dishonoured by the licentious conduct
of his two daughters, and the gold of Tolosa passed into a proverb,
for the unlawful gain which precipitates its possessor into misery and
disgrace.
[Sidenote: [102-100 B.C.]]
In the year 102 the tribune Domitius, transferred to the people the
election of the chief pontiff, which had formerly been invested in the
appointment of the pontifical college. The head of the national religion
was an important political personage. He held in his hands the threads of
the state policy, which opened or shut the oracular books of the Sibyls,
appointed sacrifices and ceremonials, interpreted the will of the gods
from portents, and placed the seal of the divine approbation upon every
public act, or withheld it from it. This engine of government had been
long firmly grasped by the nobles; it could still be handled only by
patricians; but the patricians had ceased to be identified in interest
and feeling with the ruling oligarchy, and from the hands of patricians
the traditions of the old republic were destined to receive their rudest
shocks. The appointment of the chief pontiff by the people became
eventually an important agent in the overthrow of the Roman constitution.
In the year of the battle of Aquæ Sextiæ, Marcius Philippus proposed
an agrarian law, which, however, was rejected. But at the same time
another tribune, Servilius Glaucia, carried a resolution of the people
for wresting the judicia once more from the senators, and conferring
them again upon the knights exclusively. He increased the stringency of
an existing law against extortion in the provinces; and to the holder of
the Latin franchise, who should convict a senator of its violation, he
assured the superior privileges of full Roman citizenship.
THE SIXTH CONSULATE OF MARIUS
[Sidenote: [100 B.C.]]
When Marius returned to Rome (101) he was already for the fifth time
consul. But he was not satisfied with this extraordinary series of
honours, and was not the less anxious to obtain a further renewal of his
long lease of office. The nobles, he felt, were his natural opponents.
He hastened therefore to connect himself with the leaders of the people,
to whom the chief of the aristocracy was personally hostile. Allying
himself with the tribunes Servilius Glaucia and Appuleius Saturninus, he
mingled his disbanded legionaries with the dissolute mob of the Forum,
and by threats, promises, and largesses easily overpowered the votes of
the honest citizens.[84] Marius was raised to a sixth consulship: yet he
was neither popular in his manners nor eloquent in his address (100). On
the contrary, in all civil matters, it is said, and amid the noise of
popular assemblies, the conqueror of the Cimbrians was utterly devoid of
courage and presence of mind. The undaunted spirit he showed in the field
entirely failed him in the Forum, where he was disconcerted by the most
ordinary praise or censure.
In his policy also Marius was unfixed and wavering; and instead of
steadily courting the prejudices of the Roman rabble, he favoured and
rewarded the Italians, of whom the Roman commons now entertained a deep
jealousy. After his late victories he ventured to stretch the prerogative
of the consulship to confer the citizenship on a thousand soldiers of
the state of Camerinum, who had served him well in the field. The act was
illegal as well as unpopular, and Marius did not, perhaps, make it more
palatable by the excuse he gave for it: “Amid the din of arms,” he said,
“I could not hear the voice of the laws.”[85]
The tribunes, however, who wished to strengthen their position by a
new alliance, bestowed their countenance upon the Italians also. They
caused a measure to be enacted, by which Marius was allowed to create
three Roman citizens in every colony which enjoyed the Latin franchise,
thus enabling him to bestow the boon they chiefly coveted upon many of
the soldiers who had distinguished themselves in his service. With the
same view Saturninus carried another measure, by which the unfortunate
inhabitants of the trans-Alpine provinces were deprived of their estates,
and forced to make room for the victors of Aquæ Sextiæ and Vercellæ.
The nobles resented these concessions to the conquered Italians, and
even the commons regarded them with uneasiness and distrust. They sought
to interrupt the proceedings on the occurrence of rain or thunder. “Be
still,” cried Saturninus, “or it shall presently hail.” His adherents
armed themselves with stones. Tumults arose in the Forum; the senators
and their partisans among the populace were driven away by the fury of
the veterans, and Saturninus carried his rogation with open violence.
Marius kept warily aloof, and affected great horror at the illegal
disturbance. He excited the nobles underhand to protest against the
execution of a law carried in a manner so irregular, which the tribunes
insisted on their accepting under specified penalties. As soon, however,
as they had committed themselves, Marius withdrew his countenance
from them, and left them the choice of submitting with dishonour, or
enduring the punishment of refusal. The senators, entrapped and cowed,
took the oath required, till it came to the turn of Metellus; but the
haughtiest of the nobles, though urged and entreated by his friends
to yield to necessity, disdained to swerve from the principles he had
avowed. Saturninus demanded that he should be outlawed, and fire and
water forbidden him. His friends were numerous and strong enough to have
defended him with arms, but he forbade them to draw their swords, and
went proudly into banishment.
Saturninus obtained the renewal of his tribunate. He had carried
matters with a high hand: on the occasion of his first election he
had daringly murdered an opponent; he had thwarted the nobles, and
even risked his popularity with the commons by proclaiming himself the
patron of the Italians. It was now requisite, perhaps, to recover his
ground with his supporters in the city; and for this purpose he imposed
one of his freedmen upon the citizens, as a son of their favourite
Tiberius Gracchus. This intrigue, indeed, seems to have had little
success; Sempronia, the widow of Scipio Æmilianus, and sister of the
murdered tribunes, vehemently denounced it, and the people laughed
at the imposture, if they did not resent it. But force, after all,
was more familiar to Saturninus than fraud. When C. Memmius, one of
his adversaries, was about to be elected consul, he caused him to be
poniarded in the Forum by the bandits who surrounded his own person.[86]
But he had now gone too far. To save himself he rushed into open revolt.
He climbed the Capitol, with his companion Glaucia and his band of
ruffians and assassins, seized the citadel, in virtue perhaps of his
official dignity, and defied the republic to arms. The nobles retorted
upon him with the fatal cry, that he aspired to royalty; and the people,
already perplexed at his leaning to the Italians, and shocked, perhaps,
at the frantic violence of his proceedings, were not indisposed to listen
to it. They acquiesced without a murmur in the decree of the senate, by
which the state was declared in danger and Marius charged as consul to
provide for its safety.
The city was placed in what in modern times is called a state of siege;
that is, the consul, whose ordinary functions within the walls were
purely judicial and administrative, received the power of the sword as
fully as if he were in the camp. He proceeded to invest the fortress,
which was considered impregnable to an attack, and could only be reduced
by blockade. By cutting some leaden pipes, upon which, in the security
of the times, the citadel of the republic had been allowed to become
dependent for water, the insurgents were deprived of the first necessary
of life. Saturninus offered to capitulate on the promise of personal
safety. Marius guaranteed his life; and in order to preserve him from
the fury of the populace, placed him, in the first instance, with his
followers, in the Curia Hostilia, a large public building at the foot of
the hill. But when the people scaled the walls, tore off the roof, and
poured missiles upon the wretched captives, the consul made no effort
to save them, and they all perished miserably--a deed of blood which
was long remembered, and afforded at a later period the handle for a
persecution of the nobles themselves.
No event, perhaps, in Roman history is so sudden, so unconnected, and
accordingly so obscure in its origin and causes, as this revolt or
conspiracy of Saturninus. The facility with which a favourite champion
of the people is abandoned and slain by his own clients, seems to point
to some unseen motive, with which history has forgotten to acquaint us.
The Roman demagogues were well aware of the inveterate horror with which
the people regarded the name of king; and none of them, it may be safely
said, notwithstanding the oft-repeated calumnies of their opponents,
ever ventured to aspire to it. If it be true then (as the historians
represent) that Saturninus was hailed as king by his adherents, and
accepted the invidious designation with joy, it is highly probable that
his adherents were foreigners and Italians rather than citizens. We have
already seen the use which leaders of all parties were making at this
time of the claims of the Italians to emancipation from the state of
conquered subjects in which they were still held. All in turn pressed
these claims, when it suited their particular purpose, nor did most
of them scruple to abandon them when their convenience required it.
Sometimes the nobles, sometimes the commons, were cajoled into supporting
them, as a counterpoise to the aggressions of their immediate opponents;
but both the one class and the other were at heart bitterly opposed to
them, and the hope of obtaining favour or justice from the republic seems
to have gradually disappeared from the minds of the claimants themselves.
They hated Rome, and with Rome they identified, perhaps, republican
government itself. They could only hope for redress of their grievances
from a revolution which should overthrow the supremacy of the senate
house and the Forum. This was the menace from which even the licentious
rabble of the city recoiled, and which determined Marius to allow the
violation of his plighted faith, and the sacrifice of his friend and
ally.[87] Even if entirely devoid of patriotic feeling, which we may
well believe, Marius was deeply interested in preventing any demagogue
from attaining a monarchical ascendency superior to his own.
CLAIMS OF THE LATINS AND ITALIANS TO THE CIVITAS
[Sidenote: [100-90 B.C.]]
The citizen of Rome, in complete possession of that illustrious title,
combined the enjoyment of two classes of rights, civil and political.
The civil law regulated the forms and effects of marriage, the exercise
of paternal authority, the holding of property, the capacity of willing
and inheriting; it secured, further, the inviolability of the citizen’s
person. The political law, on the other hand, gave the right of suffrage
in the election of magistrates, and in voting upon projects of law;
it conferred eligibility to public office; it permitted initiation
in certain religious rites, and, finally, it conceded the honour and
advantage of military service in the legions. The combination of these
rights and capacities constituted the complete title to the Roman
franchise. It was sometimes thus conferred upon individuals, in reward
for special services; in a few cases the inhabitants of a favoured city
were invested with it in the mass.
The admission, however, of a foreign city, in alliance with the republic,
to the full right of citizenship, required it, in the first place, to
renounce its own ancient institutions. The favoured community adopted
at once the civil law of Rome, and organised itself internally upon the
Roman model, with an assembly of the people, a curia, representing the
senate, and superior elective magistrates, generally two in number,
corresponding with the consuls. A city thus constituted took the name of
a _municipium_, that is, an office-bearing community. The inhabitants,
when they presented themselves in Rome, might exercise the right
of suffrage there, and were rendered capable of filling any of its
magistracies.
It seems, however, that the petty states of Italy, attached to their
own domestic institutions, were frequently unwilling to sacrifice them
for these advantages, and rejected the concession of political rights,
contenting themselves with the acquisition of the civil; which, while
they placed them upon a footing of equality with the inhabitants of the
city in respect to marriage, family authority, property, and person, did
not require the surrender of their own political customs. Rome herself
was not unwilling to recognise this distinction, and was wont to dispense
the favour of her franchise with affected coyness, conferring her civil
rights upon various states in succession, but reserving her political
franchise as a special boon for the most meritorious.
Thus were formed within the bosom of the great Roman Empire various
classes of communities, of different grades of civil and political
condition; but every one among them, which acquired any portion of
Roman rights, obtained the common designation of a municipium. Each
municipium retained entire authority over everything relating to (1) the
exercise of its religion; (2) the administration of its local finances,
the election of its magistrates, the maintenance of its edifices and
public works; (3) its internal police. The regulation of these matters
appertained generally to the _curies_ or governing bodies, sometimes to
the mass of the people. Accordingly, the _municipes_, or citizens of
such a community, possessed, as Cicero proclaims, two countries, the one
natural, the other political--the one actual, the other privilegial.
Thus, he continues, we regard as our fatherland both the spot where
we were born, and that which has adopted us; but that one of the two
has the strongest claims upon our affection which, under the name of
“commonwealth,” constitutes our own country pre-eminently; it is for that
fatherland that we ought to be ready to die. “I shall never deny,” he
says, “Arpinum, as my country; but Rome will be always more peculiarly
such; for Rome comprehends Arpinum.”
While such were the distinctions introduced by the republic among those
whom she adopted as her own citizens, she did not omit to classify also
the condition and privileges of the various nations of Latium and Italy
which fell successively under her sway.
[Illustration: ROMAN CATAPULT]
The first rank among the allies of Rome belonged to the tribes of the
Latin confederation; their treaties with the republic contained generally
more favourable conditions than were acquired by the other Italian
communities. Thus, for instance, the Latins preserved their territory,
their laws, their alliances, under the paramount control of Rome; they
were placed, as regarded the payment of tribute, upon a footing of
almost complete equality with the citizens of the republic; nor could
they justly complain of being required to furnish a military contingent
to fight side by side with the legions themselves. They could acquire
the rights of Roman citizenship by the exercise of certain magistracies
in their own state, or by the transfer of their domicile to Rome,
provided they left children behind them in their native place, or by the
successful impeachment of a Roman officer for political offences. In
respect of property they enjoyed a portion of the Roman privileges. But
they were excluded from the rights of Roman matrimony, and of paternal
authority; from the faculty of willing in favour of a Roman citizen, or
inheriting from one; nor could they claim the immunity from stripes and
capital punishment, which was counted the most precious of all privileges
by a people who invested their highest magistrate with the terrors of the
axe and the rod. The condition of the Latin was far better than that of
any other subjects of the republic, but it was decidedly inferior to that
of the citizen; its most engaging feature was the capacity it conferred
of acquiring completer rights, and changing the first foretaste of
freedom into its full enjoyment.
This mass of privileges, peculiar, in the first instance, to the
Latin cities, and flowing from the rights conceded to them by treaty,
became extended in due time, under the general name of _jus Latii_,
or _Latinitas_, both to individuals and to communities which had no
connection with Latium at all. As the Roman law admitted, by a fiction,
the existence of Romans without the city itself, so it allowed the name
and rights of Latium to be claimed by more distant foreigners. These
foreign Latins, under the name of New Latins, became, in process of time,
a distinct class of citizens, a special subdivision of the second rank of
the republic’s favoured children.
Among the allies of the republic, the Italians occupied a rank next
to the Latins. The name of Italy was confined at this period to the
peninsula, extending from the rivers Isère and Rubicon on the north to
the promontories of Rhegium and Iapygia. The Etruscans, the Umbrians, the
Samnites, the Marsians, the Greek communities of Campania and Apulia,
in submitting to the Roman arms, had generally made treaties with the
republic, but had failed to secure for themselves the advantageous
terms extorted by the Latins in the period of her greater weakness or
moderation. Yet in transferring their swords to the service of their
conquerors, they had merited on many a battle-field the amelioration of
their political lot. Accordingly the Italians were allowed, for the most
part, to preserve their domestic independence, their laws, magistracies,
and tribunals, while they were forbidden to form political alliances
among one another; and, though free in outward appearance, they received
the commands of Rome, which claimed to decide upon their mutual disputes.
Together with domestic liberty they enjoyed, like the Latins, immunity
from personal and territorial tribute, and shared with them the same
guarantees for the acquisition and enjoyment of property. The chief point
in which the Italian was inferior to the Latin was his not possessing the
same capacity of becoming a Roman. In the natural order of things, it
was requisite for the Italian to pass through the stage of _Latinitas_,
or _Latium_, to obtain Roman _civitas_; nevertheless the privileges
peculiarly his own were justly regarded as a boon in comparison with
mere provinciality; for even within the barrier of the Alps the Gauls
and Ligurians hardly escaped the character of enemies of the republic,
and were subjected to military control and the severest exactions under
the plenary authority of imperators and proconsuls. Accordingly these
privileges became an object of desire to the less fortunate subjects
of the empire, and, as in the case of the _jus Latii_, so also the
_jus Italicum_ became extended, in many instances, to individuals and
communities beyond the limits of Italy.
The development of this political organisation, logical and methodical
as it appears, was in fact the result of no theoretical legislation, but
the gradual and almost fortuitous effect of a series of revolutions. Up
to the moment of its complete accomplishment, even the wisest of the
Roman statesmen neither counselled nor foresaw it. But thereupon Italy
presented, under the supremacy of the metropolitan city, a hierarchy
of communities, of which one was already completely Roman; the others
more or less nearly prepared to become so; the whole machine, in all its
parts and subordinations, seemed to gravitate with a slow and regular
movement towards the central point--the franchise of the republic. But
this movement was arrested by domestic jealousies and selfish prejudices.
The same spirit of isolation and monopoly which had striven, in the
time of the kings, to shut the gates of the city against the Latins and
Etruscans, which had conceded so slowly and reluctantly the inferior
grades of privilege to the Italians themselves, still arrayed itself
against the natural tendency of the principle of assimilation. The
jealousy of the Roman commons was blind and ignorant; that of the nobles,
who came forward to marshal and direct it, was more consciously selfish
and interested. All classes, with few and honourable exceptions of
individual statesmen, wished to hinder, as far as they could, the Latins
from becoming Romans, the Italians from becoming Latins.
The struggle for these privileges had commenced almost from the period
of the first conquest of Latium and Italy; but it was not till after
the overthrow of Carthage, and the commencement of a brief period of
domestic repose, that it attained force and consistency, and succeeded
in enlisting in its favour the leaders of Roman parties. With the
extension of her conquests in the rich provinces of the East, the
citizenship of Rome became more precious; and amidst the degradation
of so many subject nations, the allies who had fought and bled for the
republic felt themselves entitled to rise to a higher level. The Latins
claimed with urgency and vehemence a perfect equality with the Romans,
the Italians pretended to succeed, at least, to the privileges of the
Latins; but to make the first concession was clearly no less than to
open the door to the abolition of all existing distinctions. The Romans
were not unnaturally alarmed at the shape in which the question now
presented itself to them. The idea of sacrificing to the conquered the
nationality of the conquerors was so new in the history of antiquity that
we cannot wonder at the reluctance, the pious horror, with which it was
generally regarded. Moreover, practical statesmen, who might soar above
the scruples of a mere sentiment, were still perplexed and terrified at
the prospect of the administrative difficulties which such a change would
introduce. They beheld in their imagination the roads of the peninsula
crowded with troops of foreigners hastening to Rome at every recurring
election, to swamp the votes of the urban population; or taking up their
abode within its walls, and conquering, as it were, the citadel of their
conquerors. In the amalgamation of Rome with Italy they could only
foresee the annihilation of Rome itself.
Meanwhile the allies, repulsed in every overt attempt to scale the
fortress of the constitution, contrived to glide surreptitiously within
the sacred pale. As early as the year 286 the censors discovered no
less than twelve thousand Latins settled in the city, and pretending to
the rank of genuine citizens. The intruders were indignantly expelled.
Ten years later a new fraud was exposed. The foreigners sold their
children to actual citizens, with the understanding that they should be
immediately enfranchised. The stroke of the prætor’s wand conferred upon
them the full franchise of the city. The precautions and prohibitions of
the senate would have been of little avail, had they not been seconded,
in a great measure, by the magistrates of the Italian cities themselves,
who regarded with jealousy the flight of their own people to Rome,
whereby the burden of their domestic dues were enhanced. The Samnites and
Pelignians reclaimed four thousand of their own countrymen who had thus
established themselves in the Latin town of Fregellæ, there acquiring the
Latin privileges and preparing to sue for the Roman. For half a century,
however, these fraudulent acquisitions of the Roman franchise were only
partial or individual. The agitation of the Sempronian reforms raised a
general ferment in the minds of the Italians, and gave force and volume
to the tide of their ambition.
It would seem that while the great Roman nobles pretended to detain vast
tracts of public domain, they cultivated and even occupied only small
portions. The conquered communities, though nominally dispossessed of
their lands, were allowed, by abuse and connivance, to enjoy the use of
a large part of them. But when the state should resume her rights over
these estates, and actually redistribute them among her poorer citizens,
the claims of the intruding natives would meet with no consideration;
they would be dispossessed of them a second time, and absolutely excluded
from their enjoyment. Accordingly, upon the first mooting of the Agrarian
laws of Tiberius, all the Italians found themselves united by the same
pressing interest, and they had no other alternative than either to
defeat the passing of these laws by combining with the faction opposed
to them in Rome itself, or, by obtaining the rights of the city, to
acquire a legal title to share with the actual citizens. They hesitated
and balanced as to their course; but upon the whole the wish to obtain
Roman privileges and Roman exemptions, to escape the tyranny of Roman
magistrates and enjoy the fruits of Roman conquest, combined with the
legitimate ambition of their soldiers and statesmen to enter upon the
noble field of Roman employments, determined them to press their claims
to admission. For a hundred and fifty years the various races inhabiting
the peninsula, distinct as they were in origin and language, had been
arrayed together under the same discipline and a common yoke. The Romans
had unconsciously formed their subjects into one nation, and the time
was arrived when a common sentiment could arm the whole mighty mass in a
combination against them. Italy had at last become a cry and a sentiment
not less powerful than Rome herself.
The senate and the nobles, who retained the national feelings in all
their strength, girded themselves to resist the threatened innovation;
but in the time of the Gracchi, the mass of the commons was already
adulterated by foreign admixtures, and felt far less keenly the old
prejudices of race and country. Accordingly, when their favourite
leaders, overlooking every ulterior consequence rather than justly
estimating them, called the Latins and Italians to their standards, the
Roman populace were easily persuaded to admit them to a share in their
own struggle, and pledged themselves to advance together the respective
interests of both. The allies themselves, under the able direction of
the Gracchi, turned all their indignation against the aristocracy of the
city, which they sought to make their own. They ascribed to the peculiar
constitution of Rome the jealous and selfish opposition they encountered,
and denounced republican government itself, on account of prejudices
incident, in fact, to all conquering races. Monarchy indeed, it may be
allowed, is generally more favourable than aristocracy to the surrender
of national prejudices; and the Italians acted upon a genuine instinct in
invoking kingly rule, and, while the tribunes allured them with the hope
of citizenship, seducing the tribunes themselves with the prospect of the
regal diadem. It was said that Saturninus was actually saluted king by
his seditious followers; and nothing, perhaps, but the deep impression,
so sedulously fostered by the nobles, of the traditional tyranny of the
Tarquins, prevented the Roman commons from joining generally in the same
cry. But the title of king was destined still to remain the popular
bugbear for many centuries; and no man had yet arisen with genius to
disguise a monarchy under the republican names of dictator or imperator.
The nobles attacked the tribunes with brute violence; the Roman commons
and the Italian confederates they managed by craft and intrigue. At one
time they sought to sow dissension between them, at another to outbid
their own demagogues in the liberality of their offers, which they took
care never to fulfil. They debauched the populace by largesses and
amusements, and detached them from the cause of the allies. Alarmed at
the progress Marius had made in opening the franchise to his Italian
veterans, they contrived, at last, to throw a cloud over the brilliancy
of his reputation, and availing themselves of the venal voices of the
tribes, to recall Metellus from banishment and consummate another
aristocratic reaction. In the insolence of their triumph they enjoined
the consuls of the year 95 to expel from the city all the Italians who
had domiciled themselves within the walls; and the law of Crassus
and Scævola, which repeated the harsh enactments of eighty and ninety
years before, convinced the injured subjects of the republic that their
mistress had learned neither wisdom nor justice by the triumph of her
arms and the extension of her empire.
[Sidenote: [95-91 B.C.]]
But though conquered, the Italians had not ceased to be formidable. The
free constitution of the generality of their cities had nourished a race
of able speakers and statesmen, and the Cimbrian War had trained many
thousands of brave veterans, who had been disbanded after the battle
of Vercellæ, and not yet recalled to their standards by the urgency
of any other foreign contest. With these resources among themselves,
they had still, moreover, a powerful friend in the Roman tribunate. M.
Livius Drusus, a son of the opponent of the Gracchi, whom the senate had
commissioned to promise still ampler concessions to their assailants
than the Gracchi themselves, had devoted himself in earnest to the
policy which his father only pretended to advocate. But in assuming the
patronage of the reformers, the younger Drusus did not abandon the party
of the nobles with which he was hereditarily connected. He sought, with
every appearance, it may be allowed, of honest zeal,[88] to conciliate
the interests of all parties. He restored the judicia to the senators,
while, at the same time, he introduced three hundred knights into the
senate. He coupled these measures with a promise of lands to the needy
citizens, and of the franchise to the Italians and Latins. Of all the
Roman demagogues Drusus may justly be esteemed the ablest and the wisest.
Full of confidence in himself, his views were large, and his frank and
bold demeanour corresponded with them. He affected the generous virtues
of the ancient republic. When his architect offered him the plan of a
house so disposed as to exclude his neighbours’ supervision, “Build
me rather,” he exclaimed, “a dwelling in which all my countrymen may
behold everything I do.” His principles however were less rigorous than
his pretensions. The necessities of his position, which required him
to make friends of all parties, demanded an exorbitant outlay, and the
means by which he supplied it were reprobated as dishonourable. His
profusion surpassed that of all his predecessors in the arts of popular
flattery; and he ventured to vaunt that his successors would have
nothing left to give but the skies above and the dust beneath them. His
manners were overbearing, and might suggest the idea that he aimed at
regal domination. He spoke of the commonwealth as “his own”; and when
the senators invited him to attend at their ordinary place of meeting,
he replied that he would await their coming in the curia of Hostilius,
which happened to be most convenient to himself. Such was the man whom
the Italians gladly invoked as their leader. In his sickness all the
cities of the peninsula offered vows for his safety. It seemed as if the
salvation of the country depended upon his recovery.
Drusus required indeed strong support in that quarter to enable him to
bear up against the odium excited by his measures among the privileged
orders at home. Even in his own house he was surrounded by timid and
murmuring friends; his own family were imbued with hostility to his
avowed policy. Among them was his nephew, M. Porcius Cato, at that time
about four years old. A chief of the Marsians, admitted to the uncle’s
hospitality, amused himself by asking the child to support the cause of
the Italians. Cato, so ran the story, frowardly refused; he was offered
playthings and sweetmeats; still he refused. At last the Marsian, piqued
at his obstinacy, held him from the window by the leg, and again demanded
his assent, threatening to cast him headlong unless he yielded. But
caresses and menaces were equally fruitless, and the Marsian sighed to
think of the resistance he must expect to encounter from the men, if a
mere child could display such dogged inflexibility.
[Illustration: ROMAN CUIRASS]
[Sidenote: [91 B.C.]]
During the progress of the tribune’s intrigues, the indisposition of both
the senate and the knights to his measures became more strongly marked;
and notwithstanding the adherence of some of the principal nobles, he
was compelled to draw closer the bands of alliance between himself and
the Italians. The impatience of his foreign associates was not easily
restrained, and he was obliged himself to denounce a plot they formed for
murdering the consuls at the great festival of the Latin _feriæ_. But his
influence waxed more and more powerful with them, and the oath they took
to promote the common interests of the confederacy expressed their entire
devotion to the person of their generous leader. They swore that they
would have no other friends than his friends, that they would count his
foes their foes, that they would spare nothing, neither their parents,
nor their children, nor their own lives, for his advantage together
with that of the common cause. “If I become a Roman citizen,” the oath
continued, “I will esteem Rome my country and Drusus my benefactor.”
The senate heard with indignation of the progress of these intrigues,
at the moment when it was called upon to ratify by a vote the proposal
for conferring the franchise upon its mutinous subjects. It was informed
that Pompædius Silo, the chief of the Marsians, was marching at the head
of ten thousand men, along by-roads and with arms concealed, towards the
city, to intimidate the nobles. A force was despatched to intercept his
progress, and a parley ensued, in which the leader of the Romans assured
his adversary that the senate was actually prepared to concede the boon
required.
For the moment blows were averted; but in the curia the discussion was
still animated and the decision dubious. The classes opposed to the
concession had gained some of the Italians to their side, and with
the support of the Umbrians and Etruscans, alarmed at the projected
foundation of new colonies in their territories, ventured still to
withhold the concession. When the day for voting arrived, the consul
Marcius Philippus attempted to break up the meeting. One of the
tribune’s officers seized and throttled him till the blood sprang
from his mouth and eyes. The city was now thrown into a state of the
fiercest excitement. Tribunes were arrayed against tribunes, nobles
against nobles, Romans against Romans, Italians against Italians. The
streets were traversed by armed bands on either side. Everything seemed
to portend a bloody solution of the crisis. At this juncture Drusus,
attended by a number of his adherents, was returning one evening to his
house. Passing along an obscure corridor he was heard suddenly to cry
out that he was struck, and fell to the ground with a poniard planted in
his groin. In a few hours he expired, exclaiming with his dying breath,
“When will Rome again find so good a citizen as myself?” The assassin had
escaped in the crowd (91).
The murder was generally imputed to the senatorial party, and especially
to the consul Philippus. The magistrates omitted to make inquiry into the
circumstances, while the murdered man’s opponents hastened to abrogate
such of his measures as had already passed into laws; and his adherents
were too stupefied to resist. Severe decrees were speedily issued against
the Italians, and they were peremptorily forbidden to interfere in the
affairs of the republic. An obscure tribune of foreign extraction, named
Varius, was put forward by the knights to impeach some of the principal
nobles, as reputed favourers of the movement. A Bestia, a Cotta, a
Mummius, a Pompeius and a Memmius were condemned and banished. Among the
accused was the illustrious Æmilius Scaurus. The only reply he deigned
to make to the charge was this: “Varius the Iberian accuses Scaurus
prince of the senate, of exciting the Italians to revolt. Scaurus denies
it. Romans! which of the two do you believe?” The people absolved him
with acclamations. But the knights still thirsted for vengeance upon
their hereditary enemies, and the actual outbreak of the threatened
insurrection alone prevented them from effecting a wider proscription of
the most unpopular of the nobles.
The allies flew desperately to arms. The death of Drusus and the
prostration of his adherents within the city reduced them to their own
national resources; but their last scruples vanished with the loss of
their Roman associates. The Marsians were summoned to take the lead, and
their chief Pompædius Silo was the soul of the confederacy. Eight or more
nations, the Picentines, the Vestines, the Marrucines, the Pelignians,
the Samnites, the Lucanians and the Apulians, together with the Marsians,
gave mutual hostages and concerted a simultaneous rising. Now for the
first time they vowed to unite together in a permanent association. They
proposed to constitute a great federal republic, organised on the model
of Rome herself, with a senate of five hundred, two consuls, twelve
prætors, and for their capital the central stronghold of Corfinium in
the Apennines, to which they gave the name of Italia. They struck medals
bearing the impress of the Sabellian bull trampling under foot the Roman
she-wolf. This alliance indeed was confined for the most part to the
nations of Sabellian origin, and its decrees were issued in the Oscan
language, the common root of the idioms then in use among the central
tribes of the peninsula. The Etruscans, the Latins, and the Umbrians held
aloof from it, and together with Campania, which was already thoroughly
Romanised, adhered to the fortunes of Rome. The Bruttians no longer
existed as a nation, and the cities of Magna Græcia had ceased to have
any political importance. The Gauls beyond the Rubicon, who had joined
Hannibal against the Romans, long since exhausted by their struggles,
made no effort now to recover their independence.
What was the relative strength of the combatants now arrayed against
each other? Three centuries earlier, at the date of the great Gaulish
invasion, the nations of Sabellia, together with the Apulians, could
arm, it is said, 200,000 men, while the Etruscans, Latins, and Umbrians
vaunted 120,000 warriors. Supposing, therefore, the proportions to
remain the same at the later period, the allies alone who still remained
to the republic may have balanced in numbers three-fifths of the whole
force opposed to her. At the same time the census of Rome herself gave
a total of at least four hundred thousand warriors; and she could draw
vast numbers of auxiliaries from her provinces and dependencies beyond
the limits of Italy. The forces, therefore, of Rome trebled or quadrupled
those of her adversaries. She occupied, moreover, the chief places of
strength throughout their territories, securely fortified against sudden
attacks, and communicating with one another and the capital by the great
military roads. But from this formidable enumeration of her resources
great deductions have on the other hand to be made. It was necessary to
maintain powerful garrisons at every point of her vast empire. Greece and
Spain, Asia and Africa, drew off her life-blood from the heart to the
extremities. The disposition of her allies was doubtful and precarious;
her own citizens were capricious, and might easily be seduced by the arts
of the demagogues, while her internal dissensions had made her suspicious
of many of her ablest statesmen. The mass of the commons of Rome took
no vital interest in the political question for which the Italians
contended, and served in the legions with no other feeling than that of
mercenaries.
THE SOCIAL WAR
[Sidenote: [90 B.C.]]
The Social or Marsic War commenced in the year 90. The republic was
taken by surprise, while her adversaries had already completed their
preparations and hastened to assume the offensive. The Italian consuls,
the Marsian Pompædius and Papius Mutilus, a Samnite, commanded two
different branches of the confederacy--the one acting in the north
between the Adriatic and the frontiers of Etruria, whence he sought to
penetrate by the valley of the Tiber to Rome; the other directing himself
against Campania and Latium on the south. While such was the disposition
of their principal armies, various detachments, led by Judacilius,
Lamponius, Afranius, Præsenteius, Vettius Scato, Marius Egnatius, Herius
Asinius, and others, were charged with the reduction of the strong
places occupied by the Romans in the heart of their own country. The
whole confederacy was in a moment in arms, and the final embassy which
it despatched to Rome announced the defection of three-fourths of Italy.
The senate boldly refused to listen to demands extorted by the sword,
and required the allies to lay down their arms before presuming to ask a
favour. The consuls summoned the citizens to their standards, and while
Alba in the country of the Marsians, Æsernia in Samnium, and Pinna in
the Vestinian territory, kept the confederates in check, they drafted a
hundred thousand men into the legions, and went forth to confront the
enemy. Lucius Julius Cæsar undertook the defence of Campania, Publius
Rutilius placed himself on the line of the Liris and Tolenus, which cover
Rome in the direction of the Marsians and Pelignians. Perperna, with a
smaller detachment, maintained the communications between the consular
armies, and guarded the approach to Latium through the frontier of the
Volscians. The great Marius himself, of whose fidelity the senate might
entertain suspicion, was entrusted with a small force on the flanks of
Rutilius, while Cæpio and Pompeius, Sulpicius and Crassus were directed
to harass the operation of the enemy by making incursions within their
territories, and menacing their armies in the rear. A considerable
reserve was kept at the same time in Rome itself, and the gates and walls
duly repaired and guarded against a sudden attack. Since the flight of
Hannibal the city had forgotten the possibility of being again exposed to
a siege.
But the Romans had scarcely time to make these dispositions before the
Italians rushed impetuously upon them, and broke their lines in various
quarters. The consul Cæsar was routed by Vettius Scato in Samnium, and
driven from the gates of Æsernia and Venafrum, which he was anxious to
support. While the first of these places continued to hold out against
a rigorous blockade, the other was surrendered by treachery and its
garrison put to the sword. Mutilus defeated Perperna, turned to the left
and threw himself into Campania. Disregarding or masking the fortresses
on his flanks and rear, he traversed the country with his troops,
received the submission of Nola, Pæstum, Stabiæ, Salernum, massacring
some of their defenders, and pressing others into his own ranks. But the
hearts of the Campanians were still with Rome. Naples, Nuceria, Capua,
and Acerræ remained firm, even while their territories were overrun by
the Samnite, their slaves liberated and enlisted by thousands among the
soldiers of the confederacy.
[Illustration: TRIBUNE IN THE DRESS OF A WARRIOR]
The losses and disgraces of the Romans still crowded upon one another.
Lamponius defeated Crassus and recovered Grumentum, the strongest place
in Lucania; while Canusium and Venusia in the same quarter were taken by
Judacilius. Cæsar sustained a second defeat from Egnatius in attempting
to relieve Acerræ, Pompeius received a check on the frontiers of Umbria,
and lastly the consul Rutilius, drawn into an ambuscade by Vettius
Scato, was routed and slain on the Tolenus with a large part of his
forces. Marius, who was posted lower down the stream, was advertised of
his general’s disaster by the corpses wafted past him by the descending
current. He promptly crossed the river, and took possession of the
enemy’s camp in their rear, while they were still occupied in gathering
the trophies of their victory. But the success of this brilliant manœuvre
failed to compensate even one of the many discomfitures the arms of the
republic had received.
The spirits of the victors of so many encounters were elated to the
highest pitch. The Etruscans and Umbrians began to falter in their
allegiance to Rome, while the envoys of the Italians were seeking a more
distant and still more formidable alliance at the court of Mithridates,
king of Pontus, a chieftain whose power and resources the republic had
not yet learned to measure. The Romans on their part, though neither
dismayed nor disconcerted, began to feel the imminence of their danger.
The sense of peril restored, perhaps, their national feelings of pride
and mutual confidence. The bodies of the consul and the brave officers
who had fallen had been carried into the city, and had excited the
deepest sensations of distress. The senate was compelled to decree that
henceforth the dead should be buried on the spot where they fell. As
in the days of the Gallic tumults, all the citizens arrayed themselves
in arms, and swords were placed in the hands of the freedmen, of whom
several corps were formed for the defence of the city and its environs.
In this attitude of grave resolution they awaited the arrival of succours
from the provinces. Sicily signalised its fidelity by the zeal with which
it furnished the necessaries of war. The Cisalpine Gaul sent ten thousand
soldiers to the army of Cæsar at Teanum; and he was further reinforced
by numerous bodies of Moors and Numidians. Enabled now to reassume the
offensive he advanced once more to the relief of Acerræ, defeated Mutilus
with great slaughter, and threw succours into the place. The citizens
were reassured by this gleam of victory, and resumed within their walls
the garb and occupations of peace.
MARIUS ASSUMES THE COMMAND
With this victory of Cæsar fortune began to turn to the side of the
Romans, but still with faltering and uncertain steps. After the defeat of
Rutilius the senate had united his shattered forces with the divisions
of Marius and Cæpio, but so deep was its jealousy of its veteran general
that it combined his inexperienced colleague in the command with him with
equal authority. Cæpio, dazzled by a trifling success, allowed himself
to fall into the snares of Pompædius. The Marsian, pretending to deliver
himself up to the republic, came with two young slaves, to personate his
own sons, as hostages, with ingots of gilt lead to represent gold, and
offered to surrender to the Roman the army confided to him. Cæpio put
himself under his guidance, and was led into an ambuscade. Pompædius
galloped to an eminence under pretence of reconnoitring, and gave the
signal to his troops. The Romans were surrounded, attacked, and cut to
pieces, and Cæpio the proconsul with them. This disaster, followed by
the surrender of Æsernia, which had suffered the extremity of famine,
compelled the senate to transfer to Marius the undivided command of
all its forces in that quarter. He commenced his operations with the
same circumspection which he had manifested in his campaign against the
Teutones. By the able choice of his positions he secured the frontier
against the inroads of the victorious Marsians, whom he refused to
encounter in the open field with his own beaten and dispirited soldiers.
“If you are so great a general,” exclaimed his opponent, “why come you
not to the combat?” “So powerful and so victorious, why do you not compel
me?” replied Marius.
But when the proper moment arrived, the conqueror of the Cimbri knew
how to profit by it. He engaged the enemy and defeated them with
great slaughter, including the loss of Herius Asinius, chief of the
Marrucinians. But the peasant of Arpinum, the accomplice of Saturninus,
the man who had defied the nobles of Rome, who had armed the proletaries,
and enfranchised the Italian veterans, could not fail to cherish sympathy
with the nations now opposed to him. To Marius at least the war was a
civil war, and many of his legionaries appear to have entertained a
similar feeling. When his troops found themselves arranged in front of
the forces of Pompædius, they recognised in the opposite ranks many of
their own guests and kinsmen. They called one another by their names, and
made kindly gestures with their hands. The two chiefs came forth from the
ranks and entered into conversation together, deploring the unnatural
contest which had so long divided them. Encouraged by the familiarity of
their leaders the soldiers themselves broke from their lines, and mingled
with one another in the plain, like citizens in their common forum. We
may believe that Marius would have been well pleased to put an end to the
war by the concession upon the spot of demands to which he at least was
indifferent or favourable. But he commanded a portion only of the forces
of the republic, and besides the army of Cæsar in the south, he was
checked by the jealous observation of his own lieutenant Sulla, who had
already more than once snatched the laurels from his hand. He was forced
to engage the enemy once more; but he fought without spirit, and refused
to complete his victory. The honour of the day fell again to his youthful
rival, who attacked the Italians in their retreat, and thoroughly routed
them. It was the first time, according to the boast of the vanquished
Marsians, that the Romans had ever won a battle either against them, or
without them.
Marius might plead the languor and ill-training of his raw soldiers for
the want of spirit he had himself manifested; but the easy success which
followed upon the more decisive blows of his subordinate were sufficient
to refute him. The same vacillating and inconsistent politician, who as
tribune had repudiated a popular measure, who as consul had launched
himself against the senate, who had seconded Saturninus and presently
reduced him to submission, who had favoured the Italians and finally
had led the legions against them, had now once more abandoned his post,
and grounded his arms in the moment of victory. After the affair of
Saturninus, suspicious and suspected on all sides, he had retired moodily
into voluntary exile. He now renounced the command by which he had made
the Italians his enemies without securing the gratitude of the Romans,
and pretended that age and infirmities unfitted him for the duties of the
camp. He retired to his villa at Misenum, formerly the residence of the
mother of the Gracchi, while Sulla sprang into his place at the head of
the legions and at the summit of popular favour.
Meanwhile the Roman arms had been crowned with success in other partial
encounters. The Umbrians and Etruscans, who had threatened for a moment
to join the general defection, were chastised and checked. But fresh
dangers were accumulating in the remoter distance. The trans-Alpine
province was harassed by an insurrection of the Salyes, which required
to be promptly repressed, and the king of Pontus was preparing to take
up arms and wrest from the republic her possessions in the East. At
such a conjuncture policy might dictate the concessions which pride
had so resolutely refused, and in the moment of victory they could be
accorded with a better grace. The consul Cæsar was empowered to carry a
law for imparting the franchise to all the Italian states which had held
aloof from the general insurrection, together with those already in the
enjoyment of Latin rights. The _lex Julia_, both in its principle and its
immediate effects one of the most important enactments of the republic,
required the citizens of such states, including Umbria, Etruria, and the
southern extremities of the peninsula, to come in person to Rome, and
demand the freedom of the city within sixty days. The time allowed for
deliberation was not long, and the hardships and dangers of the journey
might deter many even of those who could resolve at once to renounce
their own laws and institutions for the charges and immunities of the
metropolis. It is probable therefore that the concession was after all
more specious than real; and that the numbers who actually availed
themselves of it were but limited. Nevertheless, it served to impart
new hopes to the Italians, to distract their councils, and to relax the
sinews of resistance.
[Sidenote: [90-88 B.C.]]
With the commencement of the second year of war (89), the Romans were
enabled to assume the offensive in every quarter. Cn. Pompeius and
Porcius Cato, the consuls of the year, assailed the confederates in the
north; the one in Picenum, the other on the banks of the lake Fucinus.
Sulla and Cæsar turned their legions against Mutilus in Campania, while
the cities of Apulia and Lucania were attacked and recovered by officers
of inferior note. Porcius himself was slain in battle with the Marsians,
but his death was speedily avenged by his colleague. Judacilius, who
commanded in Asculum, unable to repel his besiegers, constructed a pyre
in the principal temple of the place, and laid his couch on the summit.
He then caused a repast to be served, took poison, and applied the torch.
The Romans entered the undefended walls, massacred the inhabitants, and
reduced the city to ashes.
Asculum was the bulwark of the Italian confederacy in the north, and
its fall opened the heart of their territories to the Romans. Another
great defeat, with the loss of Vettius Scato, crushed the spirit of the
Marsians, the Pelignians, and the Marrucinians, who hastened to lay down
their arms. Pompeius, the victorious general, obtained a triumph, and
among the captives who were led in chains before his chariot was a child,
carried at his mother’s breast, who lived to become a consul at Rome and
to gain the honour of a triumph himself. This was a native of Asculum, by
name Ventidius, whose strange reverse of fortune deserved to become the
theme of public admiration. The laurelled car was followed by the Roman
legionaries, and among them we may suppose was a youth, who gained in
after times a far nobler reputation, Cicero, the chief of Roman orators,
who earned under the auspices of Pompeius his first and only stipend.
In the south, the death of the late consul Cæsar had thrown upon Sulla
the conduct of the war. The cities of Campania fell successively before
his prowess and good fortune. Stabiæ was overthrown, Herculaneum and
Pompeii capitulated. His progress was checked for a moment by a mutiny in
a division of his forces, in which his lieutenant, Postumius, lost his
life. Sulla recalled the men to obedience, and required them to expiate
the slaughter of a citizen by torrents of hostile blood. Assured of
their ardour and devotion to his ascendant genius, he led them against
the Samnite general, Cluentius, and gained a sanguinary victory under
the walls of Nola. Leaving this impregnable fortress behind him, he
next entered the territory of the Hirpinians, and sacked their capital,
Æculanum. Meanwhile a Roman officer, named Cosconius, penetrated into
Lucania, and defeated Egnatius by treachery. The shattered remnant of the
confederate armies, reduced to thirty thousand men, were enclosed in the
defiles of the Apennines. Pompædius, the last survivor of the gallant
band of Italian generals, sought to envelop the Romans, as his last
resource, in the flames of a servile insurrection. He summoned the slaves
to rise throughout Italy, and put arms into their hands; at the same
time he continued to press Mithridates for succours, and his emissaries
solicited the subjects of the republics in Greece, Asia, and Africa. The
final struggle of the expiring confederacy was not uncheered by a gleam
of sunshine. Pompædius gained a victory, and entered Bovianum with the
imitation of a Roman triumph. But his success was transient, and his
laurels quickly faded. He was slain in the third year of the war in an
encounter with the prætor Metellus, near Teanum in Apulia (88).
Nevertheless the exultation of the Romans at the gradual change in their
fortunes had been repressed by the alarming accounts they continued
to receive from Asia, where the king of Pontus, the ablest and most
powerful opponent they had yet encountered in the East, was shaking
the edifice of their dominion to its centre. They hastened to send
their best general and their choicest armies to meet him; and they were
disposed in the moment of victory to make further concessions, in order
to disengage themselves from the hostility of the crushed and broken
Italians. The _lex Plautia-Papiria_ extended to all their Italian allies
the privilege which had been accorded to Umbria and Etruria by the _lex
Julia_. The franchise, that is, of the city was offered generally to
such of the Italians as chose to claim it in person within sixty days.
The Romans followed up this specious concession by great moderation
in the use of their final victory. Very few, at least, of the captive
chiefs of the confederacy were punished with death. The territory of the
subjected cities was not confiscated to the state, although the condition
of its finances compelled the senate to sell the lands appropriated
to the pontiffs and augurs beneath the shadow of the Capitol itself.
The Italians, weary of the war, were easily appeased by this politic
treatment. Corfinium, the presumptive rival of Rome, dwindled once more
into a petty provincial town. The political combination of the states of
the peninsula, the offspring of a moment of enthusiasm, fell in pieces,
never to be reunited again; and even their common language, proscribed by
the Romans in the public instruments of their cities, fell into disuse,
and was speedily forgotten. But the results of the war still lingered
after the war itself had died away. Bands of armed marauders continued to
prowl about the country, exciting partial movements in various quarters.
The mountains of Samnium, and the great forests of Sila, continued to
harbour the enemies of peace and order rather than the enemies of Rome.
There, for more than half a century, the materials of insurrection were
never wanting; political outlaws and fugitive slaves still maintained
themselves against the regular forces of the republic; life and property
were rendered insecure; the rustic labourer and the wayfaring man were
kidnapped on the public roads; even in the cities men began to accustom
themselves to the wearing of weapons, nor did the dignified and noble
venture to travel abroad without an armed retinue of clients and
retainers.
[Sidenote: [88 B.C.]]
The _lex Plautia-Papiria_, so called from the tribunes who effected its
enactment, offered, as we have seen, the franchise to all the allies of
Rome in Italy. The boon, however, was far from universally accepted.
The richest and the poorest classes were those to which alone it proved
seductive--to the former, for the sake of sharing the fruits of distant
conquest; to the latter, on account of the largess it offered to the
dissolute and idle. Of these classes many, we may suppose, flocked to
Rome, and took up their residence within reach of the Forum. The names
of the chiefs of the Italian confederacy, of Papius and Egnatius, of
Asinius and Cluentius, of Vettius and Afranius, rank from henceforth
among the aristocracy of Rome; while her orators and historians might
plausibly attribute the increasing degeneracy of the inferior populace
to the foreign elements which now began so deeply to tinge it. But the
middle classes of the Italians, to whom these advantages were less
accessible, and to whom constant attendance at assemblies and elections
was impossible, found themselves amply compensated for the loss at home,
where, content with their own municipal privileges and honours, they
could enjoy without rivalry or disturbance the comfort and dignity of
self-government. The number of new citizens thus enrolled on the list of
the censors was not disproportioned, perhaps, to the new tribes, eight,
or as some say ten, which were now added to the existing thirty-five.
The citizen was still compelled to present himself in person at the
polling-booths; the distance of his actual residence could not plead
against inveterate usage and the sanction of the national religion. For
the Roman Forum was a holy place, elections and assemblies were holy
ordinances, sanctified by auspices and ritual ceremonies; the devices
of modern governments, by which the votes of federal communities can be
taken on the spot, or their voices represented by local delegates, were
inadmissible on the principles of Roman, and indeed generally of all
ancient polity.
The theory that the same individual could not be at the same time a
citizen of two states, and that in accepting the prerogative of Roman
civitas, he forfeited the franchise of his native country, might
cause many devoted patriots to hesitate in accepting the proffered
boon. Several cities, especially those of Greek origin, to whom the
institutions of Hellenic civilisation were justly dear, such as Naples,
Heraclea, and Puteoli, continued steadfastly to reject it. Brundusium did
not at once accept it, but received the Roman privilege of immunity from
the land tax at a later period from Sulla. We are at a loss to ascertain
the regulations under which the municipal governments were conducted,
where the inhabitants were nearly equally divided between Romans and
Italians. It is probable, however, that the concession became speedily
accepted almost throughout the peninsula. The right of suffrage might
be justly disregarded, but citizenship conferred rights of property,
marriage, and immunity from taxation, which were felt to be substantial
benefits. The inviolability of the person, and exemption from official
caprice and tyranny, were advantages also which could not fail to be
highly prized. From henceforth the admissibility of the provincials
to the privileges of the capital became more generally recognised as
a fundamental principle of policy. The full franchise was conceded in
special instances to various states in Spain, Africa, and Gaul, and
it became necessary to declare what nations, from their barbarism and
inveterate hostility, as for instance the Germans and certain Gaulish
tribes, should be formally pronounced ineligible.
The enrolment of the Italians among her own citizens deserves to be
regarded as the gravest stroke of policy in the whole history of the
republic. In modern times it has been frequently condemned as an
unqualified error, and the general approbation it met with from the
Roman writers may, doubtless, be explained by the fact that the masters
of Roman literature were in almost every case Italians or provincials
themselves; but in fact they require no such excuse for the opinions
they have so generally expressed. They judged correctly in pronouncing
the policy of comprehension upon which the republic now boldly entered,
and from which she never long departed till the whole mass of her
subjects were incorporated with her own children, both just and salutary.
Doubtless it helped in some measure to accelerate the destruction of the
old national sentiments; but these were already mortally stricken, and
were destined quickly to perish in the general corruption of society.
It reduced the legions more directly to instruments of their general’s
personal ambition; but the strongest check to that fatal tendency
had been already removed by the enlistments of Marius, and these the
necessities of the state, as we have seen, had both justified and
approved.[c]
FOOTNOTES
[84] [Appian[f] informs us that Saturninus had at his back the country
people, who were the honest citizens, whereas the dissolute mob of the
Forum supported the senate. This fact has been generally overlooked.]
[85] [As a representative of the rural class, Marius consistently
favoured the Italians; he was not so ignorant nor so wavering as
has generally been assumed. It was the rabble which opposed Italian
interests.]
[86] [His opponents, rightly or wrongly, accused him of this crime.]
[87] [Ihne[d] says: “Marius found himself placed in an awkward dilemma.
He was no longer able to control his own party, and was being carried
along by them against his will far beyond the point to which he had
intended to go.”]
[88] [Ihne[d] says of him, “He had something of the noble enthusiasm
of the Gracchi. Generous and free from all selfishness and meanness,
but without political experience, adroitness, and knowledge of men, he
aspired to a task which surpassed his strength.” Velleius Paterculus[e]
calls him “a man of the noblest birth, the greatest eloquence, and the
strictest purity of life; but who in all his undertakings was more
distinguished by ability and good intention than by success.”]
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