CHAPTER XVIII. MARIUS AND SULLA

The personal rivalry of her two most fortunate generals becomes now the

main channel of the history of Rome herself. In the year which closed

the contest of the republic with her dependent allies (88), Sulla was

forty-nine years old, Marius about seventy. The former was enjoying the

full breeze of popularity and renown, while the latter, wearied but not

sated with accumulated honours, was moodily throwing away the advantages

he had earned in his earlier career. From campaign to campaign Sulla, as

we have seen, had dogged the steps of the elder warrior, always ready

to step in and seize the opportunities which the other cast recklessly

in his way. Not that Marius in his exalted station was even from the

first indifferent to this incipient rivalry. He was deeply jealous of

his subordinate. He felt chagrin at the contrast presented by their

respective birth and origin; for Sulla, though needy in point of fortune,

was a scion of the illustrious house of the Cornelii, and plumed himself

on the distinction and advantage such a lineage conferred. Sulla,

moreover, was trained in the accomplishments of Hellenic education, which

Marius, conscious of his want of them, vainly affected to despise. Sulla

wrote and spoke Greek; his memoirs of his own life became the text-book

of the Greek historians of Rome, from whom we principally derive our

acquaintance with him. But this varnish of superior culture seems to have

failed in softening a rough plebeian nature. Sulla was one of many noble

Romans who combined with pretensions to literary taste the love of gross

debauchery, and pleasure in the society of mimes and vulgar jesters. He

was a coarse sensualist and by his disregard of the nuptial tie offended

even the lax morality of his age. His eyes, we are told, were of a pure

and piercing blue, and their sinister expression was heightened by the

coarseness of his complexion and a countenance disfigured by pimples and

blotches, compared by the raillery of the Greeks to a mulberry sprinkled

with meal. His manners, except when he unbent in the society of his

inferiors, were haughty and morose; nor is there any act of kindliness or

generosity recorded of him. The nobles who accepted him as their champion

had no personal liking for him. But selfish and ambitious though he was,

the aggrandisement of his party and order was with Sulla a species of

fanaticism. He despised the isolated ascendency of a Marius, and aspired

to rule in Rome at the head of a dominant oligarchy.

Marius had quitted the camp at the most critical moment of the war,

and while he buried himself in a distant retreat, Sulla brought the

contest to a close, having obtained his election to the consulship for

the year 88. The imminence of a new war with Mithridates had hastened

the arrangements for the peace, and Sulla was still consul when it

became necessary to select a general to command in the East. For this

important service both his merits and his position gave Sulla the highest

claim; but Marius was mortified and jealous, and cursed his own folly

in having at such a moment withdrawn himself from the public eye. He

returned impatiently to Rome, and showed himself once more among the

young soldiers who trained and exercised themselves in the Field of Mars,

running, wrestling, and climbing poles in rivalry with the most vigorous

and active among them, to prove that, though old in years, he possessed

the energy requisite for command. But the nobles had no wish to gratify

the man they feared and distrusted, while they had found one of their own

order, on whose fidelity they could rely as implicitly as on his valour.

They mocked the clumsy feats of the veteran candidate, and persuaded the

people to follow their example, and send their old favourite with jeers

to his retreat in Campania.

The enterprise demanded a man of the maturest powers and the highest

abilities. Pontus, on the eastern shores of the Euxine Sea, the region

from which Mithridates derived his title, constituted but a small part of

the dominions over which he ruled. His patrimonial kingdom he inherited

from a succession of princes of high Persian extraction, and he was

himself the sixth sovereign of his own name. To the north he had extended

his sway over the tribes of the Cimbric Bosporus as far as the banks

of the Borysthenes or Dnieper, while to the south he had received from

his father the sovereignty of Phrygia, which the republic had sold for

a sum of money. This country, indeed, the Romans had again wrested from

him at an early period of his reign; but he had taken advantage of their

dissensions to interfere in the affairs of Cappadocia, to murder, it

is said, its sovereign, and at last to place upon its throne an infant

child of his own. The armies of Mithridates were recruited from the

hardy barbarians of the Caucasus and the Taurus; but his generals were

mostly perhaps of Greek extraction, skilled in military science hardly

less than the Romans themselves. Nor had he failed to enlist in his

service many able citizens of the republic, for the allegiance of the

Romans sat but loosely upon them in the provinces, and they were easily

swayed from their principles by the seductions of eastern civilisation.

His own genius was conspicuous both in war and peace. He was robust in

bodily frame, and expert in martial exercises. The story that he had

fortified his system against poison by the constant use of antidotes is

a mere romance which modern science has pronounced impossible; nor is it

much more credible that he could converse, as has been asserted, with

the various tribes of which his kingdom was composed, in twenty-five

different languages or dialects. Our accounts of the great king of Pontus

are derived entirely from Roman sources, and we cannot rely implicitly

upon the particular instances of ferocity and perfidy recorded of him. As

an Oriental, however, it is but too probable that he maintained himself

in power by the usual arts of oriental conquerors, by shameless fraud and

remorseless cruelty.

THE FIRST MITHRIDATIC WAR

[Sidenote: [92-88 B.C.]]

In the year 92, the Romans interfered to overturn the appointment

Mithridates had made to the throne of Cappadocia. Mithridates did not

venture to resist, but he secretly instigated Tigranes, king of Armenia,

to invade the country and expel the nominee of the republic. Ariobarzanes

fled to Rome, and there obtained assurance of support. Sulla, at this

time prætor in Cilicia, was ordered to reinstate him, while the king of

Pontus still remained tranquil. But the state of the republic’s affairs

in Italy soon emboldened him. The death of a king of Bithynia gave him

an opportunity; and he dared to defy the western conquerors by setting

up a pretender to the throne of which they claimed the disposal. At the

same time he made a descent upon Cappadocia in person, and expelled the

luckless Ariobarzanes a second time.

The disasters of the Social War were now carrying dismay and

consternation to the heart of the republic. Sulla had been recalled to

aid the efforts of her best commanders in her defence. Nevertheless, when

the fugitive appeared once more before the senate with entreaties for its

support, he did not appeal in vain to the old Roman constancy. An army

was despatched to restore him, and once more Mithridates bowed to the

storm, and retired from the disputed territory. But the Roman officers

in the East were not satisfied with this act of submission. They incited

their allies to harass and invade his dominions, and when appealed to by

him, refused to check their aggressions. Then at last did Mithridates arm

in his own defence. With an immense force he burst upon the territories

both of the republic and its allies. He chased Ariobarzanes a third time

from his dominions, defeated the king of Bithynia, supported by the

legions of Rome, in a great battle on the river Amnias in Paphlagonia,

routed the Roman commander in a second engagement, overran Phrygia and

Galatia, and proclaimed himself a deliverer to the subjects of the

republic in the East. His advent was hailed by the provincials with

acclamations. The insolence of the conquerors and the tyranny of their

fiscal agents had excited deep discontent among them. On the mainland

almost every city joyfully opened its gates to Mithridates, and when in

the intoxication of his triumph he issued, as we are told, a decree for

the massacre of all the Roman residents in Asia, it was promptly obeyed,

if indeed, as we may fairly conjecture, it had not been spontaneously

anticipated. Eighty thousand citizens--some say 150 thousand, though even

the lesser number is probably a gross exaggeration--are stated to have

fallen by this bloody act of retribution.

THE FIRST CIVIL WAR

[Sidenote: [88-87 B.C.]]

Meanwhile the senate was preparing to encounter this formidable assailant

with adequate forces, and had pitched, as we have seen, upon Sulla to

take the command. Marius was disgusted at the inactivity to which he

found himself condemned amidst the derision of the populace. In his

retirement at Misenum he meditated revenge. The new citizens of Latium

and Italy were already mortified at finding the inefficiency of their

votes, confined to a small minority of the tribes, and the slender

importance attached to their favour. Their nobles complained of their

want of influence, their proletaries of the paltry price their votes

commanded. Marius conceived the idea of turning their discontent to his

own advantage. Between him and them there was an ancient sympathy, and

this it was easy to improve into strict alliance. He offered to repair

the injustice of the senate towards them, and to diffuse them among the

old tribes of the city, in which their voices would be more powerful than

when cooped within the narrow limits of a few separate divisions. Marius

recommenced his old game of popular agitation.

Among the tribunes was Sulpicius Galba, whose eloquence and learning and

high aristocratic connections had raised him to eminence in the state,

but who under the pressure of debt was ready to sell his services to a

patron who could hold out to him at least a distant prospect of sharing

the spoils of Mithridates. With this guerdon in view, he paused at no

excess. Taking Saturninus as his model, he studied only to surpass him in

audacity. He marshalled a body of six hundred knights around his person,

and gave them the name of his opposition senate. He attacked the consuls

in the public assembly with a band of armed men, and seized and massacred

the son of Pompeius Rufus. Sulla, the other consul, being pursued, made

his escape into the house of Marius, where he was least likely to be

sought for, and so baffled the pursuers who ran past him. Marius himself

received the credit of concealing and letting him out by another door,

but Sulla, we are told, made no acknowledgment of such a service in his

memoirs. Marius indeed was for the moment triumphant. Sulpicius, having

cleared the Forum of his chief opponents, prevailed on the populace to

nominate his patron to the command in Asia; and the new proconsul, while

preparing to set out on his mission, despatched two tribunes to receive

the army of Sulla. But Sulla, escaping from the Forum, had repaired

directly to his camp. He had inflamed the fury of his devoted soldiers

by the recital of his double injury. While the officers, men of birth

and national feeling, refused to listen to his solicitations, the men

responded to them without scruple, and carried his banners towards Rome,

killing the emissaries of Marius on the way. Joined by Pompeius Rufus

with the ensigns of the consulship, these tumultuous bands resumed the

appearance of a regular army; and Sulla could avow himself with some show

of legality the defender of the state and avenger of the insults she had

sustained in the person of her chief magistrates.

This daring movement was entirely unexpected. Six legions advanced upon

the city, and the men who had just seized the government were totally

unprovided with arms to resist them. Marius sent two prætors to meet the

enemy, and command them to desist; but the soldiers neither listened to

them, nor paused in their march. They were stripped of their togas, their

fasces were broken, and themselves ordered to return with every mark of

indignity. Such violence betokened worse to follow. The citizens were

dismayed, and without regard either to Marius or Sulpicius, sent envoys

to entreat the advancing generals to halt, while they promised to do full

justice to their cause by legal and peaceful measures. Sulla himself,

it is said, had faltered in his daring design; but he was reassured by

a dream, in which a strange divinity, whom the Romans had learned to

worship in the East, placed a thunderbolt in his hand, and directed him

to launch it against his enemies. He advanced, and Marius, having vainly

attempted to raise troops to oppose him, fled with precipitation. As he

entered the city tiles and stones were hurled on his soldiers from the

house-tops; but a threat of burning the city soon reduced every opponent

to submission. Sulla had conquered Rome.[89]

But the conqueror was moderate in the use of his victory. He caused his

troops to observe the strictest discipline, and limited his personal

vengeance to exacting the death of twelve of his enemies. Sulpicius

was betrayed by one of his own slaves, and put to the sword. Sulla

enfranchised the betrayer for his obedience to the edict, and then cast

him from the Tarpeian Rock for his treachery to his master. Marius

himself escaped out of the city, while a price was set upon his head,

and upon that of his son also. On the morrow Sulla summoned the people

to assemble in the Forum. He explained to them that factious foes had

compelled him to resort to force; but having once taken up arms he

was determined not to lay them down till he had secured the power of

the insulted nobles against the future aggressions of the tribunes.

Sulpicius, during his brief tenure of power, had recalled the exiles

of the Varian law, and increased the influence of the Italians in

the comitia. Sulla abrogated all these enactments, and to insure the

permanence of his own, repealed the solemn statute which gave the force

of law to the _plebiscita_, or resolutions of the people. The violence

of Marius drove his rival to the opposite extreme, and established a

counter-revolution upon the ruins of tribunician ambition. But Sulla

was not yet prepared to enforce an oligarchical tyranny against every

constitutional prescription. He left the people the free exercise of

their suffrages, and professed himself not dissatisfied with their

boldness in rejecting a nephew of his own as a candidate for the

consulship.

Cn. Octavius, a firm but independent supporter of the senate, obtained

one place; but the people gave him for a colleague L. Cornelius Cinna,

well known as a partisan of Marius. Sulla pretended, perhaps, to guide

them in this latter choice; he claimed the right of binding the new

consul to favour his own measures by a solemn vow. At his direction

Cinna ascended the Capitol, with a stone in his hand, which, when he had

taken the oath, he hurled to the ground, imprecating upon himself that

he might be cast as violently out of the city, if he failed to observe

it. The Romans were deeply impressed by such religious formalities; and

the peculiar horror with which they regarded Cinna’s later atrocities

was coloured, perhaps, by indignation at his perjury. For, no sooner

had he entered upon his office than he proceeded at once to disturb the

settlement he had pledged himself to respect, and caused a process to

be instituted against Sulla himself. But Sulla was eager to commence

operations against Mithridates, and neither stayed to meet the charge nor

to punish the accuser. The victory he anticipated would be a sufficient

answer to the people, and give him the means of completing the policy of

which he had hitherto laid only the foundations.

[Illustration: CAIUS MARIUS]

Meanwhile Marius was flying for his life, and hiding the head upon which

a price had been set. His romantic adventures are narrated with great

animation by his biographer Plutarch. On quitting Rome he was separated

in the darkness of the night from the partisans who aided his escape.

Retiring to a farm he possessed at Solonium he despatched his son to get

provisions from a kinsman in the neighbourhood; but during his absence,

fearful of a surprise, or suspicious, perhaps, of his nearest friends,

he abandoned this retreat and hurried to Ostia, where he knew that a

vessel was in waiting for him. The son reached the place to which he had

been sent, but the house was immediately invested by the enemy’s scouts,

and he was with difficulty saved from their pursuit, being conveyed in a

wagon, hidden under a load of beans, to the house of his wife in Rome.

The next night he made his way to the sea, and embarking in a vessel

bound for Libya, arrived there in safety.

The elder Marius was wafted along the coast of Italy by a favourable

wind, but fearing to fall into the hands of Geminius, a personal enemy,

one of the chief people of Tarracina, he charged the mariners to avoid

touching at that place. Unfortunately the wind changed, and a strong

gale setting in shore, they were unable to keep out at sea. The old man

himself, alarmed at his danger, and tormented with sea-sickness, bade

them run to land, which they reached near Circeii. They were now also in

want of provisions, in search of which they descended from the bark, and

wandered along the shore. Some herdsmen to whom they applied, but who had

nothing to give them, recognised Marius, and warned him that horsemen

had been just seen riding about in quest of him. Weary and famishing,

his life at the mercy of companions hardly less harassed than himself,

he turned from the road and plunged into a deep forest, where he passed

the night in extreme suffering. The next day, compelled by hunger, and

wishing to make use of his remaining strength before he was completely

exhausted, he once more sought the highways in quest of some hospitable

retreat. He kept up his spirits and those of his followers by repeating

to them the prodigies which had foretold his greatness in youth, and

assured them that he was destined to enjoy the highest magistracy yet a

seventh time. He had arrived within two or three miles of Minturnæ, when

they perceived a troop of horse advancing towards them, and at the same

moment two barks sailing along the coast. Running down to the sea as fast

as their strength would allow, and casting themselves into the water,

they swam towards the vessels. Marius, corpulent and heavy, and quite

overcome with fatigue, was carried or hurried along by the exertions of

his slaves, and with difficulty lifted on board, while the horsemen,

following closely in pursuit, shouted to the sailors to abandon him in

the waves. The sailors touched with pity at first refused to surrender

him, and the horsemen rode off in anger; but they presently changed their

minds, brought their bark to shore, and induced Marius to quit it, and

take food and rest on land, while they waited, as they pretended, for the

evening breeze. As soon as he was lifted out of the vessel and laid on

the grass his bearers rejoined the ship; the sails were hoisted, and he

found himself betrayed and abandoned. For some time he lay in despair; at

last he rose, and made another effort to save himself.

The coast near the mouth of the Liris, at which he had been put on shore,

was a desolate swamp, through which the wretched Marius waded with pain

and difficulty, till he reached an old man’s lonely cottage. Falling at

his feet he begged him to save a man who, if he escaped from his present

dangers, would reward him beyond all his hopes. The man, who either knew

Marius of old, or perceived in the expression of his countenance the

greatness of his rank, offered him shelter in his hut, if shelter was all

he needed, but promised to conceal him in the marshes, if he was flying

from the pursuit of enemies. With the old man’s assistance Marius hid

himself in a hole by the river’s side, and covered himself with reeds and

sedge.

But Geminius of Tarracina was in hot pursuit. After ransacking every

place of refuge far and near, he reached the hut in the morass, and

loudly questioned the occupant. Marius, who overheard what was passing,

seized with a paroxysm of terror, drew himself out of his hiding-place,

and buried himself up to the chin in the water. In this position he was

discovered, dragged out, and led naked to Minturnæ. The magistrates here

and elsewhere had received orders to make search for the fugitive, and to

put him to death when taken. The decurions of Minturnæ met to deliberate,

and resolved to execute the sentence and claim the reward. But none of

their citizens would undertake the ungracious office. Marius was placed

in custody, in a private house; a Cimbrian slave, a captive of Vercellæ,

was sent with a sword to despatch him. Marius was crouching in the

darkest corner of the chamber, and the man, so ran the legend, declared

that a bright flame glared from his eyes, and a voice issued from the

gloom, “Wretch, dare you to slay Caius Marius?” The barbarian immediately

took to flight, and throwing his sword down rushed through the door,

exclaiming, “I cannot kill Caius Marius.” The Minturnians were shocked

and penetrated with remorse: “Let him go,” they said, “where he pleases,

as an exile, and suffer in some other place whatever fate is reserved for

him. And let us pray that the gods visit us not with their anger, for

ejecting Marius from our city in poverty and rags.” Thereupon all the

chief people of the place presented themselves before him in a body, and

offered to conduct him with honour to the seacoast, furnishing him at the

same time with everything requisite for his comfort. There was need of

expedition, and their nearest way lay through the sacred grove of Marica,

into which whatever was once carried was never permitted to be again

carried out. But when an old man exclaimed that no road was impassable

to Marius, his voice was hailed as a divine monition, and superstition

herself fell before the champion of Italy.

Marius thus effected his escape from his nearest pursuers. He set sail

for Africa, but landing for water on the coast of Sicily, was very nearly

taken and slain. On the shores of Africa he hoped to find allies among

the chieftains of Numidia, with whom he had formed relations of amity at

the period of his war against Jugurtha. He landed to await the result of

his negotiations. While he sat in silent meditation among the ruins of

Carthage, himself a livelier image of ruin hardly less appalling, the

Roman governor of the province sent to warn him to be gone. The Numidians

could not venture to shelter him, and he was compelled to take refuge on

an island off the coast, where he continued for a time unmolested.

[Illustration: MARIUS HIDING IN THE MARSHES]

While the conqueror of the Cimbrians was thus flying before the face of

his own countrymen, and his triumphant rival prosecuting the war against

Mithridates in the East, affairs were hurrying on to a new and unexpected

revolution at Rome. The Samnites had never entirely laid down their arms

at the general pacification of Italy; they rose under their leader,

Pontius Telesinus, excited fresh movements among the slaves and bandits

in the south of the peninsula, and at one moment threatened a descent

upon Sicily. Metellus Pius, to whom the repression of this new Social War

was entrusted, was unable to bring the enemy to a decisive engagement,

but continued to make head against them with various alternations of

success. The army of the north was still arrayed in Picenum, under the

banners of Pompeius Strabo, who showed no disposition to relinquish his

command at the conclusion of hostilities in that quarter. The senate

despatched the late consul Pompeius Rufus to receive its legions from

his hands. But it had no means of satisfying the soldiers’ demands for

pay or largesses, and its emissary met with a cold reception from these

disappointed mercenaries. Their discontent soon broke out in open mutiny,

instigated, as has been generally suspected, by Pompeius Strabo himself.

Rufus was massacred before the altar at which he was sacrificing. Strabo

presently appeared among the mutineers, and restored order, without

instituting inquiry or inflicting punishment. Such were the dispositions

of the army and the general upon whom Rome was now compelled to rely,

both for the pacification of Italy and the maintenance of the established

government.

As soon as Sulla had withdrawn to Asia, Cinna made no further concealment

of his designs. Avowing himself the restorer of the late order of things,

he demanded the recall of the exiles of his party, and the restoration of

the laws of Sulpicius, that is to say, the full and final emancipation of

Italy. In the actual temper of the public mind, such demands could not

fail to produce a sedition in the Forum. Such, in fact, was the result. A

disturbance ensued, and blood was shed. But Cinna had miscalculated his

strength. The new citizens, upon whose efforts he relied, were few in

number. The senate, his colleague Octavius, and even a majority of the

tribunes of the plebs, together with the mass of the original citizens,

united themselves against him. They flew to arms, and drove his partisans

out of the city. Cinna, we may suppose, counted in this abortive attempt

upon the support of Pompeius Strabo, while that general, reserved and

perhaps undecided, contented himself with observing it from a distance,

and leaving the two factions to weaken and exhaust each other.

The victorious party proceeded to deprive Cinna of the consulship, and

elected L. Merula, a flamen of Jupiter, a man respectable for his birth

and reputed integrity, in his room. Cinna, proscribed and outlawed,

betook himself to the new citizens of Campania, and declaimed to them

on the persecution to which he was exposed for his devotion to their

interests. The Campanians discovered more zeal for the defence of their

newly acquired rights than they had evinced in the struggle to obtain

them. Cinna succeeded in collecting an armed following. Many exiles of

his party flocked to his standard, and among them was Q. Sertorius, an

officer of distinction. Nor did he scruple to unite himself with the

Samnites and Lucanians, the avowed enemies of the republic. Clothed in

black, with disordered hair and beard, he ventured to enter the camp

of the Roman general commanding in Campania, and moved the soldiers to

compassion at the sight of a consul kneeling to them in supplication.

They insisted on placing themselves under his orders. At the head of

a Roman army he demanded the restitution of his rights, and vowed the

destruction of his opponents.

Wandering from coast to coast, and threading the ambuscades of a thousand

enemies, Marius was not unapprised of the events that were passing. He

found means of communicating with his friends, and when he suddenly threw

himself on the coast of Etruria, he was joined by several adherents with

a band of five hundred fugitive slaves. Etruria was crowded, as we have

seen, with a population of serfs, whose native masters kept them in a

state of degradation and misery. Unconscious of the political questions

in agitation, these men flocked to the adventurer’s banner as the symbol

of vengeance and plunder. While Marius advanced upon the city from the

west, Cinna was slowly approaching in the opposite direction.

At the same time Sertorius and Carbo threatened her from other quarters,

and Rome found herself encircled by four armies of her own rebellious

citizens, backed by the resources of the Samnite insurrection. To resist

these accumulating dangers, the senate hastily recalled Metellus, bidding

him make peace with the Samnites on any terms. But the conditions they

exacted in the insolence of this triumph--admission to the franchise,

compensation for their losses, the surrender without return or

reciprocity of their fugitive slaves--were intolerable to the pride of

the Roman general. Metellus ventured to disobey his orders, and broke off

the negotiation. He left a small detachment under his lieutenant Plautius

to check the advance of the enemy, while he hastened in person to Rome.

Plautius was speedily overpowered, and the rebel Romans were reinforced

by the whole strength of the Samnite confederacy, which devoted Rome

itself to destruction. There can be no peace, they exclaimed, for Italy

until the forest shall be extirpated in which the Roman wolves have

made themselves a den. The senate was reduced to extremity. Envoys were

despatched to the quarters of Pompeius Strabo in Picenum; his command was

acknowledged, his services were invoked, his return to the defence of the

city earnestly entreated. At this moment Strabo might feel himself the

arbiter of his country’s destinies; but he still vacillated as to his

course, and continued apparently to treat with both parties, until the

advancing successes of the Marians diminished the value of his adhesion.

Treason was at work within the city. For a moment Rome was opened to

Marius, and he well-nigh succeeded in effecting his entrance by a gate

on the side of the Janiculum, from which he was repulsed after a sharp

engagement. Mutiny broke out in Strabo’s camp, which he had advanced

almost to the walls. His soldiers seem to have personally detested him;

a conspiracy was formed against his life, and defeated only by the

devotion of his son, who threw himself on the ground and declared that

the mutineers should pass over his body before they reached the object

of their fury. The young Pompey was already beloved by the soldiers,

and this spirited defiance saved the life of the father. But famine and

pestilence quickly followed. The populace of the city were swept off in

great numbers, nor were the soldiers, on either side, exempt from the

contagion. The consuls, abandoning the unwholesome districts round the

walls, withdrew their legions to the Alban mount. Strabo himself fell

a victim to the disease, or, as some accounts relate, was killed by

lightning. It is not improbable that he was actually assassinated.

This last blow paralysed the resistance of the senate. A first deputation

was sent to Cinna, to arrange terms of accommodation. When these were

refused, a second was only charged to solicit an amnesty. Cinna received

it seated in his curule chair, with the ensigns of the consular office

which he claimed to bear. Marius stood by his side, squalid and unshorn,

and clothed in the black rags of an exile and an outlaw, and his gloomy

silence interpreted, in the worst sense, the ambiguous reply which Cinna

vouchsafed the deputation. But no further time was allowed for parley.

The senate hastened to invite her conquerors within the walls.

Then, at last, Marius opened his mouth with bitter words: “An exile,”

he exclaimed, “must not enter the city.” The restoration of Cinna to

his consulship, of his associate to his dignities and privileges, may

have saved Rome from being delivered to the Samnites for destruction;

but the victorious generals had still their own soldiers to satisfy, and

they did not shrink from surrendering the city to plunder and massacre.

They had pledged their words for the safety of the consul Octavius,

and the augurs whom he had consulted had ventured to assure him of his

security. Fortified by these assurances he had repelled the entreaties

of his friends to effect his escape, and had declared that as consul

he would never desert his country. He had betaken himself with a small

retinue to the Janiculum, and there seated himself in his curule chair,

with the ensigns of his office around him. Here he soon learned that

neither the dignity of his office nor the promises of the victors would

command respect. But he refused to rise from his place, and when a band

of assassins approached him, calmly offered himself to the sword.[90]

His head was severed from his body, and carried to Cinna, by whose order

it was suspended before the rostra. This, it is said, was the first

instance of the public exhibition of these horrid trophies of civil war,

and the custom, which became but too frequent in the subsequent contests

of the Roman factions, was thus inaugurated in the person of the highest

magistrate of the city. As the massacre proceeded, the bodies of the

knights and meaner citizens were cast out for burial, but the mangled

heads of the senators were reserved for exhibition in the Forum. The

thirst for vengeance or plunder was succeeded by a savage delight in the

horrors which accompanied it, and the populace itself, debauched and

degraded, learned to gloat upon the blood of the victims. In the list of

slain are included many of the noblest names of Rome. P. Crassus, who

had been both consul and censor, either slew himself or was killed by

the assassins. M. Antonius, celebrated at the time, and long afterwards

remembered as one of the greatest of Roman orators, was murdered by the

leader of a body of soldiers, whom he had almost moved by his eloquence

to spare him. Two of the Julii, kinsmen of Julius Cæsar, the future

dictator, suffered. Some were caught and murdered in the act of flying;

others, who ventured to throw themselves upon the mercy of Marius, were

coldly repulsed and cruelly slaughtered.

Marius himself seldom condescended to answer their entreaties; but his

followers were instructed to spare those only to whom he held out his

hand to kiss. The swords of the hired assassins were directed, in the

first instance, against the adherents of Sulla and the aristocratic

faction, the special objects of the conqueror’s vengeance; but their

numbers were speedily swelled by slaves and Italians, who sacrificed men

of every party to their indiscriminate fury.

For a few days Cinna and Marius allowed these ruffians to riot unchecked.

At last they deemed it necessary to arrest their career of systematic

murder and pillage. Sertorius was charged with the task of repressing

them with a military force, and the assassins themselves were made to

feel the edge of the sword they had so long wielded with impunity. But

the new rulers of the city continued to destroy by the forms of judicial

process the victims who had escaped tumultuary violence. Cinna could

not pardon the illustrious Merula the crime of having succeeded to the

consulship of which he had been himself deprived. The flamen of Jupiter

opened his own veins, after a solemn declaration in writing that he had

previously laid aside his tufted cap of office, that he might not involve

his country in the guilt of sacrilege. Catulus, the noble colleague

of Marius in the last battle against the Cimbri, threw himself on his

knees, and vainly begged for life. “You must die,” was the only response

vouchsafed him; and he was compelled to suffocate himself with charcoal

in a newly plastered chamber.

[Sidenote: [87-86 B.C.]]

[Illustration: STANDARD BEARER]

Cinna and Marius now began to reorganise the government of the state.

Not deigning even to summon the assembly of the tribes, they nominated

themselves by their own authority to the highest magistracy. Marius

became consul for the seventh time. At the age of seventy, with his

health broken and strength failing, which had borne him through so many

fatigues, he reached the summit of his aspirations and accomplished

the prediction, the assurance of which had nerved his courage in such

dire vicissitudes. Nevertheless, while Cinna reserved for himself the

administration of affairs in Italy, the old general was destined to

resume the command of the legions, and wrest from Sulla the conduct of

the war against Mithridates.

Sulla, indeed, it was already reported, had driven the king of Pontus

to sue for peace, and was about to return and measure himself once more

with the usurpers of the commonwealth. Marius, upon whom the auguries

of his young rival’s ultimate success had made no less impression than

the prognostications of his own triumphs, shuddered at the approaching

contest, in which he felt himself doomed to be worsted. Harassed by

terrific dreams, or worn out by nightly watchings, he sought escape

from his own thoughts by constant intoxication.[91] Wearied with life,

he could hardly wish to protract the existence which had become so

intolerable a burden to him. One evening, it was related, while walking

with some friends after supper, he fell to talking of the incidents of

his life, beginning with his boyhood; and after enumerating his triumphs

and his perils, no man of sense, he said, ought to trust fortune again

after such alternations; upon which he took leave of his friends, and

keeping his bed for seven days successively, thus died. We are tempted to

suspect that, impelled by disgust and despair, he shortened his last days

by suicide. The deceased consul’s obsequies were celebrated with pomp,

and accompanied, if we may believe the story told us, with a frightful

ceremony. In ancient times, according to tradition, it had been customary

to slaughter slaves or captives on the tomb of the departed hero; but if

any such usage had actually prevailed among the Romans, it had been long

softened at least into an exhibition of gladiatorial combats.

On this occasion, however, the tribune Flavius Fimbria determined to

immolate a noble victim to the manes of the dead. He therefore caused the

venerable Mucius Scævola, the chief of Roman jurists, to be led before

the pyre, and bade the sacrificer plunge a sword into his bosom. The

wounded old man was allowed to be carried off and tended by his friends,

under whose care he recovered. But when Fimbria heard that he still

lived, he brought him to the bar of judgment, and being asked what charge

he had against him, coldly replied, “Having escaped with life.” The story

thus told by Valerius Maximus is founded, perhaps, on a misapprehension

of a passage in Cicero, who only says that Fimbria required Scævola to

be wounded.[92] If the tribune had intended to make a sacrifice, he

would hardly have suffered it to remain incomplete. Only eleven years

before, human sacrifices had been abolished by a decree of the senate.

But in many expiatory and lustral rites, the shedding of a drop of blood

was retained as a type of the ancient usage with which it has been

frequently confounded. It may be added, that the historians have passed

over this shocking occurrence in total silence; and the actual death of

Scævola will be related at a later period.[b]

IHNE’S ESTIMATE OF MARIUS

“The judgment pronounced on Marius by posterity is not, like that on many

other eminent men, wavering and contradictory. He is not one of those

who to some have appeared heroes, to others malefactors, nor has he had

to wait for ages, like Tiberius, before his true character became known.

Disregarding the conscious misrepresentations of his personal enemies, we

may say that he has always been taken for a good specimen of the genuine

old Roman, uniting in his person in an exceptional degree the virtues

and the faults of the rude illiterate peasant and the intrepid soldier.

No one has ever ventured to deny that by his eminent military ability he

rendered essential service to his country. Nobody has doubted his austere

virtues, his simplicity and honesty, qualities by which, no less than by

his genius for war, he gained for himself the veneration of the people.

On the other hand, it is universally admitted that as a politician he was

incompetent, and that he was only a tool in the hands of those with whom

he acted. But morbid ambition and revengeful passion urged him at last

to deeds which make it doubtful whether it would not have been better

for Rome if he had never been born. He has, therefore, neither deserved

nor obtained unmixed admiration; but as his darkest deeds were committed

in moments when he was half mad from sufferings and indignities he had

endured, and when perhaps he hardly knew what he was doing, he may, in

the opinion of humane judges, gain by comparison with Sulla, who acted

from reflection and in cool blood when he consigned thousands to death

and enacted the horrid spectacle of the proscriptions.”[e]

Cinna now chose for his colleague Valerius Flaccus, the same who, as

consul fourteen years before, had aided Marius to crush the conspiracy of

Saturninus; an appointment which seems to betoken considerable respect

for the usages of the state; for Flaccus, though formerly both consul and

censor, had taken much less part in the recent contest than either Carbo

or Sertorius, whose inferior rank counterbalanced their higher services.

Cinna was now actively engaged in fulfilling his pledges to his allies.

Censors were elected on purpose to effect the complete emancipation

of Italy by suppressing the ten Italian tribes, and enrolling the

new citizens of the Plautian law among the thirty-five tribes of the

city. Whether this inscription was based upon a principle of numerical

equalisation, or of geographical distribution, or whether it was

attempted to combine the two, we have, perhaps, no means of determining;

but thus the last remaining distinction between the Romans and Italians

was effaced, for as many at least of the latter class as chose to avail

themselves of the proffered privilege. The Samnites, Lucanians, and

others still scorned to accept it. Another measure, undertaken by

Flaccus, was more delicate, and more generally interesting. The consul

ventured to enact an adjustment of debts, and relieve the accumulating

distress of the poorer citizens, by enabling all obligations to be

cancelled by the payment of one-fourth of the principal. He exchanged,

as the Romans phrased it, silver for coppers; for the copper coin called

the as was made equivalent for the purpose to the silver sesterce, which

at this time was of four times its intrinsic value. After so long a

series of wars and revolutions, and the fatal changes which had long

been operating in the possession of property, it is possible that this

measure was adopted as a necessary expedient. But whatever the urgency

of the occasion may have been, the stroke was of fearful augury for the

future, and did not fail to kindle criminal hopes in the dissolute and

discontended for more than one succeeding generation. Having accomplished

this important measure, Flaccus placed himself at the head of the legions

destined for the Pontic War, and proceeded to the East to watch the

movements of Sulla.

While yet unchecked by the best troops and most accomplished generals of

the republic, Mithridates had obtained the most astounding successes. The

kingdoms of Bithynia and Cappadocia had fallen without resistance into

his hands. The Roman province of Asia had succumbed, and even received

its new master with acclamations. From thence he had crossed the Ægean

Sea, accepting the submission of its rich and flourishing islands, and

his admiral Archelaus had captured Athens itself, with its harbour in

the Piræus and all its naval stores and equipments. The Greek cities

were, for the most part, favourably disposed towards the liberator, who

promised to break the rod of proconsular oppression. It was impossible to

foresee how far the contagion of provincial disaffection might spread;

and when Sulla landed on the eastern shores of the Adriatic, his task had

swelled to the reconquest of one hemisphere of the empire.

SULLA IN GREECE

Nor had he now, like his predecessors in the career of eastern conquest,

the undivided resources of the commonwealth to sustain him. Sulla was

conscious that he was only the general of a party which, though for the

moment triumphant, was, he well knew, insecure, and every express that

arrived to him from Rome brought him alarming accounts of the fears and

perils of the friends he had left behind him. He reached Greece at the

commencement of the year 87 with a force of five legions, which he had

no means of recruiting, and he might apprehend that in the course of

another year he would be superseded by another commander, the nominee,

perhaps, of his enemies. He had not a moment to lose. Instead of checking

the licentiousness of his soldiers, and drawing tighter the long relaxed

bands of discipline, which must have been a work of time and leisure,

he was compelled to stimulate their ardour and secure their obedience

by additional indulgence and license more complete. The course of his

march he allowed to be marked by plunder, devastation, and sacrilege. He

traversed Greece and Asia to gorge his men with booty before he turned

their arms against the invader from the East. The sacred treasures of

the temples at Epidaurus, Ephesus, and Olympia fell successively into

his hands. When the spirits of his soldiers were elated to the utmost,

he led them under the walls of Athens, which he speedily reduced, and

devoted to pillage. In Bœotia he encountered the enemy in the open field,

and routed them in the great battle of Chæronea (86). Flaccus was now

advancing upon his steps, and summoning him to surrender his command to

his legitimate successor.

[Sidenote: [86-84 B.C.]]

He was about to turn boldly upon the intruders, confident of his

soldiers’ devotion, when Mithridates placed a second army within his

reach. A second great battle at Orchomenos broke the power of the king

of Pontus, reducing him to act on the defensive beyond the waters of the

Ægean. Greece remained as a clear stage for the Roman armies to contend

upon. At the close of the year 86 Sulla had taken up his quarters in

Thessaly, while Flaccus, not venturing to engage him, had moved in a

lateral direction, and watched him from the neighbourhood of Byzantium.

Among the new consul’s officers was Flavius Fimbria, the tribune whose

ferocity has already been signalised. Beloved by the soldiers whose

licentiousness he encouraged, while his general strove fruitlessly to

repress it, Fimbria conceived the idea of making himself independent

of the government at home, and acting the part of a Strabo or a Sulla

himself. Flaccus was assassinated in his camp, and Fimbria, who may be

supposed to have instigated the deed, was proclaimed general in his room

by the soldiers themselves. But neither they nor their new leader chose

to measure themselves with the rival imperator in Thessaly. Passing

over into Asia (85) they ravaged every fertile plain and wealthy city,

attacked the forces of Mithridates wherever they could reach them, and

defeated a son of the great king himself. Mithridates was driven out of

Pergamus, and reduced to shelter himself in Pitane, where he must have

been captured, had not Lucullus, a lieutenant of Sulla, removed the

fleet with which he co-operated to a distance, in order to prevent the

upstart Fimbria from snatching the honour of such a triumph from his

own superior. Mithridates escaped by sea, and Sulla opened negotiations

with him. Upon his surrendering Bithynia to Nicomedes, and Cappadocia

to Ariobarzanes, renouncing his pretensions to the province of Asia,

and delivering up a large portion of his fleets and treasures, he was

solemnly admitted to the alliance and amity of Rome. Sulla thus confined

the enemy of the republic to the limits of his dominions, such as they

existed before the war; but, doubtless, had his own resources been more

abundant and his position more secure, he would not have been content

with a barren victory, nor have returned from the frontiers of the empire

without an effort to advance them.

Sulla had entered Asia to conduct his negotiations at the sword’s point.

As soon as they were concluded he turned abruptly upon Fimbria. The two

Roman armies met near Thyatira; but Fimbria’s soldiers, plied with gold,

rapidly deserted, and even those who still kept to their standards,

refused to engage their brethren in the field. Having failed in an

attempt to procure his rival’s assassination, Fimbria found himself

deprived of his last resource. In this extremity Sulla promised him his

life, on condition that he should resign his command, and withdraw from

Asia. When Rutilius, on the part of his general, offered him a safe

conduct to retire by sea, he replied proudly that he knew a shorter and a

better way, and pierced himself with his sword.

Fimbria might well despair when he saw the forces with which his own

victory over Mithridates had armed the champion of the party he had

outraged. Sulla could leave in the East the legions which his rivals

had brought to share or contest his laurels, while he took himself the

route of Italy with a force of thirty thousand veterans, who had served

three years under his standard, and had learned in a rapid career of

glory and plunder to regard him as the founder and the pledge of their

fortunes. The treasures of Mithridates, swelled by the ransom of an

hundred Greek and Asiatic cities, furnished him with ample means for

securing their fidelity. The vast fleets of Asia, delivered into his

hands, might be used to abridge the long march through Thrace and

Macedonia. The news of the surrender and death of Fimbria was accompanied

by the announcement of Sulla’s speedy return; and the moderation he had

professed while his successes were still incomplete was already exchanged

for bitter complaints of the injuries he had received, the confiscation

of his estates, the banishment of his family, the proscription of his

own person, and persecution of his party. But his foes and those of

the republic, whom he classed together, were now, he declared, about

to suffer due chastisement; in proclaiming an amnesty for honest men

of all parties, he announced that he would respect the privileges of

the Italians, and leave them no excuse for devoting themselves to his

adversaries.

THE RETURN OF SULLA; AND THE SECOND CIVIL WAR

[Sidenote: [84-83 B.C.]]

The senate, no less than the populace, was terrified by this manifesto.

So many of the Marian party had become incorporated among the thinned

ranks of the ancient aristocracy, that the counter-revolution now

impending seemed not only to menace the safety of the particular faction

which had aspired to rule the state, but to threaten the great mass of

the nobility with indiscriminate massacre. Both in Rome and throughout

the states of the peninsula, the vicissitudes of war and conflicts of

special interests had gone far to efface the old distinctions of parties,

and both Cinna and Sulla relied rather upon personal than political

attachments. The senate, as an order in the state, could only pretend to

mediate between rival chieftains.

It now ventured to send a deputation to mollify the ferocity of the

conqueror; on the other hand, it forbade the consuls to make preparations

for their own defence. Cinna and Carbo, who had now succeeded to Flaccus,

disregarded this feeble interference. They made new levies throughout

Italy, and solicited the Samnites and Lucanians to wreak their vengeance

upon Rome by arming once more against her victorious champion. The

Italians promised their succours; but the troops they levied for the

purpose could not be induced to embark, and the expedition which Cinna

rashly undertook to lead against Sulla in the East was reluctantly

abandoned. Cinna himself was soon afterwards massacred in his camp by

his own mutinous soldiers. Carbo took advantage of the disturbed state

of affairs to withhold the election of another colleague, and remained

through the rest of the year 84 in sole occupation of the consulship.

He strengthened himself by a further extension of the franchise, and

enrolled large numbers of emancipated slaves in the thirty-five tribes

of the city. His brief usurpation was a career of unbridled violence.

He hurled his enemies from the Tarpeian Rock and expelled the tribunes

from the city. He caused the terrified senate to decree that all the

legions then in arms should be disbanded, hoping to fix upon Sulla a

charge of disloyalty in refusing, as he of course expected, obedience

to the command. Sulla had, by this time, assembled his troops at

Dyrrhachium, and this decree was the signal for his crossing the sea

with five legions of veterans. The invader was aware that he should have

armies far more numerous than his own to encounter, but these he knew

were for the most part new levies; while the old soldiers they had among

them were dispersed in petty detachments and under unknown leaders: nor

did he apprehend that any confidence or concert would exist among the

host of generals, Carbo himself, the young Marius, Cælius, Carrinas,

Brutus, Sertorius, and others, under whom they were arrayed. The Italians

ranged themselves on the side of Carbo and Marius, but many tribes were

at least lukewarm in the cause, the promises and bribes which Sulla

could administer might be expected to find their way into the camp of

the enemy. The north of Italy, the Cisalpines, the Picentines, and the

Marsians were jealous of the Samnite confederacy in the south; and even

the Samnites, in their implacable hostility to the Roman power, seem to

have negotiated secretly with the assailant, in whom they, for their

part, recognised only the enemy of the republic. Sulla’s address was

equal to his valour. He was enabled to penetrate into the heart of Italy

without striking a blow. One by one the most illustrious officers of

the government brought over their troops to him. Metellus Pius raised

his standard in Liguria; the young Pompey, already the idol of his own

soldiery, levied three legions for him in Picenum, and defeated the

Marians in various encounters. Crassus, the son of a victim of the late

proscriptions, who had been compelled to conceal himself for the last

eight months in a cave, Cethegus, Dolabella, and M. Lucullus, brother to

Sulla’s lieutenant in Asia, gave to his cause the lustre of their noble

names. The persecution which the young Marius presently renewed against

the most distinguished senators, effected the complete identification of

the interests of Sulla with those of the highest aristocracy of the city.

[Sidenote: [83-82 B.C.]]

At this crisis, an event, the origin or authors of which were never

discovered, threw the city into consternation. On the sixth of July 83,

the Capitol was consumed by fire; even the Sibylline volumes, stored

away in its most secret recesses, were devoured by the flames. This

destruction of the sanctuary of the republic, the site of its wealthiest

and most august temples, and of the oracles which guided the most solemn

decisions of the senate, seemed to many an announcement of a great change

in the destinies of the state. It was the closing of the first volume of

the fortunes of Rome.

From Apulia, Sulla had passed, as we have seen, without an obstacle into

Campania. He was there met by the consul Norbanus, whom he defeated in

the neighbourhood of Capua. Scipio, the other consul, commanded a second

force at Teanum, a few leagues in the rear of his colleague. Sulla

demanded a truce and employed the interval in tampering with the fidelity

of the soldiers opposed to him, who speedily passed under his colours.

At the commencement of the year 82, Carbo and the young Marius took

possession of the consulate: the one undertook to close the passes of the

Apennines, and check the threatened attack of Metellus and Pompey on the

north; the other to cover the approach to Latium against the advancing

legions of Sulla. The former gained some successes against Metellus, and

was only reduced to the necessity of retreating by the critical position

of his colleague. Marius had selected Præneste, an impregnable position

on the frontiers of Latium, for his headquarters. There he assembled

his military forces, and collected all the treasures he had amassed

at leisure, including the plunder of many temples in the city, and a

large mass of gold and silver drawn from the vaults under the Capitol.

Confiding, perhaps, in the strength of this citadel, he had not attempted

to prevent Sulla from seizing the passes of the Apennines, nor did he

come forth to encounter his assailant till he had arrived at Sacriportus,

four leagues in advance of Præneste. The complete defeat which Marius

sustained at this spot opened the road to Rome; for Sulla could venture

to leave his beaten enemy behind their impregnable walls, and push on

towards the city which was ready, as he well knew, to open its gates. He

arrived indeed too late to prevent the crowning massacre in which Marius

caused the most illustrious of his remaining enemies to be slaughtered

in the curia itself. Among the victims was Mucius Scævola, the grand

pontiff, who had so narrowly escaped on more than one previous occasion,

and who was now sacrificed before the altar of Vesta, whose eternal fires

were not extinguished by the scanty drops of blood the old man’s veins

could supply.

[Sidenote: [82 B.C.]]

Sulla masked Præneste with a detachment under Lucretius Ofella, while he

swiftly traversed Rome, and threw himself into Etruria, where Carbo was

advancing to the rescue of his colleague Marius, being himself unable

to maintain his position in the Cisalpine against Metellus and Pompey.

Carbo stationed himself near Clusium, behind the Clanis, with his Italian

allies and some Gallic and Iberian troops. Of the Iberians, however, a

portion passed over to the enemy, and the general in a fit of despair

caused the remainder to be massacred. Engaging the enemy he obtained two

trifling successes, and fought a bloody battle without a decisive result.

But fortune became more favourable to Sulla, who cut off one large

division of his adversaries, and now eagerly expected the arrival of

Metellus and Pompey to surround Carbo with irresistible numbers. In this

strait Carbo, instead of dashing forwards to relieve Præneste, returned

on his steps to arrest the assailants from the north.

[Illustration: AN INCENSE BURNER]

He contented himself with detaching a division of his army to effect a

junction with the Samnites, now advancing, and thus create a diversion

on the right of Sulla’s position. Sulla took measures to guard the

defiles which lead towards Præneste, while Pompey, by a lateral movement,

surprised and routed the detached division. The ground, however, was

cleared around Carbo’s entrenchments. He had only a single enemy,

Metellus, before him, and upon him he threw himself with desperate

resolution. But a great battle fought at Faventia near Ravenna resulted

in his total defeat, with the loss of ten thousand slain, and several

thousands of deserters. His officers hastened to pillage and betray

him. His quæstor Verres plundered his military chest, while Albinovanus

massacred several chiefs of the army, whom he had invited to a banquet.

Norbanus took ship and fled to Rhodes. Carbo, after raising another

army in Etruria, and conducting for some time a war of guerillas in the

mountains, abandoned his colleague to the fate which awaited him, and

made the best of his way into Africa. Sertorius had already withdrawn

from a contest which he judged to be hopeless, and was engaged in forming

a new confederation in Spain. The Marian chieftains surrendered Italy to

the senate, and sought to raise the provinces against it (82).

Sulla and his colleagues now directed their victorious legions upon

the last of the Marian armies in their last stronghold, Præneste.

But Pontius Telesinus, at the head of a combined force of Samnites,

Lucanians, and Campanians, to whom the destruction or humiliation of

Rome was a dearer object than the success of either party among the

Romans, seized the opportunity to wreak the vengeance of their countrymen

upon the capital of their common enemies. Adroitly evading the lines of

the numerous legions which were now concentrating upon Præneste, they

penetrated by night within ten or twelve miles of the city, which they

hoped to surprise, and give to the flames. But they spent one day in the

preparations for the assault, and in the interval the slender garrison

within the city was enabled to communicate with Sulla. On the first of

November the Samnites advanced, but Sulla was already at their back.

At the Colline Gate he came up with them, and engaged them in a long

and desperate encounter. Since the invasion of the Gauls Rome had never

struggled against an enemy so near to her own walls, nor been brought so

nigh to destruction.

The combat lasted a day and a night. The left wing commanded by Sulla

himself was put to rout, and the fugitives running to the lines before

Præneste, exclaimed that the battle was lost and their imperator himself

slain. But Crassus meanwhile, with the right wing, had broken the

enemy’s ranks, and pursued them as far as Antemnæ. Eight thousand of the

Italians were made prisoners, and the Roman officers captured in their

ranks were devoted to the sword. Pontius Telesinus, grievously wounded

in the fight, was despatched by the conqueror on the field of battle.

His whole life had been devoted to the hatred of Rome, and at the moment

when she finally escaped from his murderous grasp he could no longer wish

to live. He was the last Italian enemy of Rome. As the adversary of the

Decii and Fabii he might have been the destroyer of the Roman name, and

have changed the face of history. But in the age of Marius and Sulla he

could only hope for one day of plunder and conflagration, and when this

momentary triumph was snatched from him, what sweeter satisfaction could

he covet than to fall among fifty thousand corpses, one-half of which

were Roman?[93]

As soon as the Prænestines learned the result of this bloody day, and

saw the heads of the Italians and Marians borne in triumph beneath

their walls, they opened their gates to the victors. The young Marius

had retired into a subterraneous apartment with the brother of Pontius

Telesinus. Determined not to fall into the enemy’s hands, they challenged

each other to the combat, and Marius, having slain his friend and

confederate, caused himself to be despatched by the hands of a slave. A

few cities still held out. At Norba in Latium, the inhabitants chose to

consume themselves together with their city, rather than submit to the

conqueror. Nola opened its gates after a long defence; Volaterræ resisted

for two years. But the struggle in Italy was hopeless. Spain and Africa

rose indeed against the Roman government; but the gates of the peninsula

were securely closed against these foreign auxiliaries.

Events and circumstances had now fulfilled their part in developing

Sulla’s policy, and moulding his character. Fond of literature, vain

of his accomplishments, attached to frivolous pleasures and frivolous

people, a man, it is said, of soft and even tender feelings, and easily

moved to tears by a tale of sorrow, Sulla in his early years had

surprised his countrymen, rather than alarmed them, by the success of

his military career and his influence with the soldiers. The haughty

jealousy of Marius had disposed him to take an opposite part in public

life. The rivalry of the two great captains had been enhanced by the

contrast of their manners, origin, and connections. In brooding over his

personal resentments Sulla had insensibly come to identify himself with

the cause of the oligarchy. The sanguinary violence of Cinna and Marius

had irritated the champion of the persecuted faction, and he had vowed

a bloody vengeance against the authors of the proscriptions. But the

opposition he experienced in Italy expanded his views beyond the limits

of party warfare. The Etrurians and the Samnites transformed him from

the chief of a Roman faction into the head of the Roman nation. The vows

of extermination they breathed against the sacred city of Quirinus sank

deeply into his mind. He had displayed in the East his contempt for the

just claims of the provincials. The cries of the miserable Greeks and

Asiatics he had mocked with pitiless scorn, and had reimposed upon their

necks, in its full weight and irksomeness, the yoke from which they had

in vain invoked Mithridates to relieve them. The man who had reconquered

the East had now reconquered Italy, and he determined to restore the

supremacy of his countrymen at their own gates, which he had vindicated

with triumphant success at the farthest limits of their empire.

The morning after the battle of the Colline Gate, Sulla was haranguing

the senate in the temple of Bellona. As an imperator commanding a

military force, the law forbade him to enter the city, and the senators

attended his summons beyond the walls. Cries of horror and despair were

suddenly heard outside the place of assembly. “Be not alarmed,” he calmly

remarked to the affrighted senators, “it is only some rascals whom I

have ordered to be chastised.” They were the death cries of the eight

thousand Samnite prisoners, whom he had delivered to be cut to pieces by

his legions in the Field of Mars. The first of his blows fell upon the

Italian confederates; but he speedily launched his vengeance upon the

Romans themselves. On his return from Præneste he mounted the rostra,

and addressed the people. He vaunted his own greatness and irresistible

power, and graciously assured them that he would do them good if they

obeyed him well; but to his foes he would give no quarter, but prosecute

them to the death, high as well as low, prætors, quæstors, tribunes, and

whosoever had provoked his just indignation.

THE PROSCRIPTIONS

These words were a signal to his adherents, and before the names of the

destined citizens were publicly announced many a private vengeance was

wreaked, and many a claim advanced upon the conqueror’s gratitude. The

family of Marius were among the first attacked. One of his relatives

named Marius Gratidianus, who had signalised his prætorship by checking

the debasement of the coinage, was pursued by Catiline, a brutal young

officer, and murdered with the most horrible tortures. The assassin

placed the bloody head upon Sulla’s banquet-table, and coolly washed his

hands in the lustral waters of a neighbouring temple. The corpse of the

great Marius himself, which had been buried and not burned, was torn from

its sepulchre on the banks of the Anio, and cast into the stream. This

desecration of the funeral rites was an impiety of which the contests of

the Romans had hitherto furnished no example. It was never forgotten by

a shocked and offended people. The troubled ghost, says the poet of the

civil wars, continued to haunt the spot, and scared the husbandmen from

their labours on the eve of impending calamity.

A great number of victims had already perished, when Catulus demanded

of Sulla in the senate, “Whom then shall we keep to enjoy our victory

with, if blood continues to flow in our cities as abundantly as on the

battle-field?” A young Metellus had the boldness to ask when there would

be an end to these miseries, and how far he would proceed before they

might hope to see them stayed. “Spare not,” he added, “whomsoever it is

expedient to remove; only relieve from uncertainty those whom you mean to

save.” Sulla coldly replied that he had not yet determined whom he would

spare. “Tell us then,” exclaimed Metellus, “whom you intend to punish.”

Thereupon a list of proscriptions appeared containing eighty names. This

caused a general murmur; nevertheless, two days after, 230, and the next

day as many more, were added to the list. And this proscription, in

which Sulla had consulted no magistrate, was accompanied with a speech

in which he said that he had proscribed all he could think of for the

present; by and by he might perhaps remember more. Rewards were offered

for slaying the proscribed; it was rendered capital to harbour them.

Their descendants were declared incapable of public office, and their

fortunes were confiscated to the use of the state, though in most cases

they were actually seized and retained by private hands. Nor were the

proscriptions confined to Rome; they were extended to every city in

Italy, and throughout the length and breadth of the peninsula neither

temple nor domestic hearth offered security to the fugitives. From the

first of December 82 to the first of June in the following year, this

authorised system of murder was allowed to continue. Catiline, who had

previously assassinated a brother, now got his victim’s name placed on

the fatal list, in order to secure his estate. The favourites of Sulla,

his slaves and freedmen, drove a lucrative trade in selling the right to

inscribe the names of persons whom any one wished to make away with. The

dignity of public vengeance was prostituted to mere private pique and

cupidity.[94] One man was killed for his house, another for his gardens,

another for his baths.[95] One unfortunate wretch, who had never meddled

with affairs, examined the lists out of mere curiosity. Horror-struck on

seeing his own inscribed, “My Alban farm,” he exclaimed, “has ruined me”;

and hardly had he spoken the words before the pursuers smote him.

Sulla might smile to see the number of accomplices he had associated in

his crimes, and he sought perhaps to render their share in these horrors

more conspicuous by the rewards with which he loaded them. Upon Catiline,

the boldest and readiest of his partisans, a man of blasted character and

ruined fortunes, he heaped golden favours. The young Crassus, who had

so narrowly escaped the sword of Marius, now laid the foundation of the

wealth which earned him the renown of the richest of the Romans. Pompey

had executed without remorse his master’s vengeance upon captives taken

in arms; at his command he had consented to divorce his wife Antistia,

and take in her stead Sulla’s step-daughter Metella; but he withheld his

hand from the stain of the proscriptions, and scorned perhaps to enrich

himself with the spoils of judicial massacre. Among the kinsmen of Marius

was one whom Sulla himself vouchsafed to spare. Caius Julius Cæsar,

then eighteen years of age, was connected by blood with Marius,[96] and

by marriage with Cinna. Sulla contented himself with requiring him to

repudiate his wife. Cæsar refused, and fled into the Sabine mountains.

The assassins were on his track, while his friends at Rome exerted

themselves to the utmost to obtain his pardon. The vestals interceded for

him.

Some of Sulla’s own adherents raised their voices in his favour, and

pleaded his youth, his reckless temper and dissipated habits, in proof

of his innocence or harmlessness. “I spare him,” exclaimed Sulla, “but

beware! in that young trifler there is more than one Marius.” Cæsar was

saved; but he prudently repaired to the siege of Mytilene.

The proscriptions were lists of selected victims, and though hundreds

undoubtedly perished whose names had never been publicly devoted to

slaughter, yet the number of the original citizens who fell in the

massacres were not beyond the reach of computation. The accounts we

have received vary indeed in this particular; but of senators there

were slain perhaps from one to two hundred, of knights between two and

three thousand. The victims of a lower class were, we may suppose,

proportionally more numerous. But the destruction of the Italians was

far more sweeping and indiscriminate. Cities were dismantled, and even

razed to the ground; their lands were seized and distributed among the

veterans of the Sullan armies, of whom 120,000 were located in colonies

from one end of the peninsula to the other. The natives driven from

their houses and estates were massacred in crowds; according to popular

tradition the Samnite people were utterly annihilated, and of all their

cities Beneventum alone remained standing. The inhabitants of the

wretched Præneste were slaughtered wholesale. The Etrurians expiated with

the direst persecution the tardy aid they had given to the common cause

of the Italians. The great centres of their ancient civilisation had

long fallen into decay, but a new class of cities had risen upon their

ruins, and attained riches and celebrity. Of these Spoletium, Volaterræ,

Interamna, and Fæsulæ were delivered to Roman colonists; the latter city

was dismantled, and the new town of Florentia erected with the fragments

of its ruins. Throughout large districts the population became almost

entirely changed; everywhere the chief people perished from the face

of the land, and with them all that was distinctive in the manners and

institutions, even in the language of the country. The civilisation of

Etruria disappeared from the sight of men, to be rediscovered at the end

of twenty centuries, among the buried tombs of forgotten lucumons.

The same exterminating policy extended also to the provinces, wherever

the temper of the native races seemed to resent the uncontrolled

domination of the Roman conquerors. Sulla had chastised Greece and Asia

with a rod of iron. He now commissioned his lieutenants to chase his

enemies from the retreats to which they had been invited in Sicily,

Africa, Gaul, and Spain. Metellus fell upon the Cisalpine province,

Valerius Flaccus devastated the Narbonensis, Pompey was despatched to

punish the provinces of the south, and Annius was deputed to follow

Sertorius into Spain and recover the vast regions which he had armed

against the new government of Rome, and even against Rome herself. At

the same time the republic was threatened with a renewal of her foreign

warfare. The Thracians, never yet subdued, troubled the frontiers of

Macedonia; Mithridates was commencing a new movement in Asia; the

distressed and indignant population of the eastern coasts had betaken

themselves in vast numbers to the sea, and infested the waters of Greece

and even Italy itself with fleets of pirate vessels. The mountains of

Etruria and Sabellia, of Samnium and Lucania, swarmed with the miserable

fugitives from spoliation and massacre, and armed bands roamed beneath

the walls of populous cities ready to carry off any booty that fell in

their way, and rendering both life and property everywhere insecure.

Even the proprietors of estates leagued themselves with these wretched

outcasts, and employed them to kidnap free citizens of the republic, to

be buried as slaves in their forests, or chained in their factories.

Sulla had returned to Rome laden with the spoils of war; his troops had

been gorged with plunder, and he could not plead for his proscriptions

the demands of an insatiate soldiery. But the accumulating troubles of

the empire, and the increasing armaments required in every quarter,

demanded the opening of new sources of revenue. The provinces, harassed

by war, were now crushed by imposts. Treaties and promises were alike

disregarded. All were forced to contribute--not only the tributary

states, but even those which had acquired by their services immunity and

independence. To satisfy the requisitions made upon them, many cities

were forced to pledge their public lands, their temples, their ports,

and even the stones of their walls. Sulla took upon himself to sell

the sovereignty of the independent kingdom of Egypt to Alexander II.

Donatives were demanded of foreign kings and potentates.[b]

“Zachariæ,[k]” says Ihne,[e] “in his book on L. Cornelius Sulla (i. 145),

has hit the truth in saying: ‘We must not imagine that these horrors

and cruelties were caused by the passions so powerfully excited by the

civil war, nor that they are to be attributed to Sulla’s implacability

and vindictiveness, nor that Sulla simply connived at them, or ordered

deeds which he could not prevent, surrounded as he was by an army drunk

with victory and greedy for plunder. It is true some dark passions were

at work, and in several instances Sulla acted from momentary whims or was

influenced by angry passions. It is true that Sulla was obliged to be

indulgent and forgiving to his soldiers because he was himself in want of

indulgence and forgiveness. Nevertheless we have good reason to believe

that on the whole Sulla acted on a deep and coolly meditated plan.… He

intended that out of the work of destruction a new and vigorous Italy was

to come forth with a population from whose gratitude or satisfaction he

could confidently expect security for peace, and for that constitution

of the republic which he was about to establish.’” With this Freeman[l]

agrees, when he says that Sulla “was not cruel in the sense of delighting

in human suffering. Through the whole of Sulla’s tyranny there is nothing

passionate; it is not so much cruelty as recklessness of human life;

it is the cold, deliberating, exterminating policy of a man who has an

object to fulfill, and who will let nothing stand in the way of that

object.”[a]

FOOTNOTES

[89] [The Roman historian Florus[d] comments on and classifies the wars

thus: “This only was wanting to complete the misfortunes of the Romans

that they should raise up an unnatural war among themselves and that in

the midst of the city and Forum, citizens should fight with citizens,

like gladiators in an amphitheatre. I should bear the calamity, however,

with greater patience if plebeian leaders or contemptible nobles had been

at the head of such atrocity; but even Marius and Sulla (O indignity!

such men, such generals!), the grace and glory of their age, lent their

eminent characters to this worst of evils. It was carried on, if I may

use the expression, under three constellations, the first movement

being light and moderate, an affray rather than a war, for the violence

prevailed only between the leaders themselves; in the next rising, the

victory spread with greater cruelty and bloodshed, through the very

bowels of the whole senate; the third conflict exceeded not merely

animosity between citizens, but that between enemies, the fury of the war

being supported by the strength of all Italy, and rancour raging till

none remained to be killed.”

[90] [On this act of Octavius, Beesly[c] cynically comments: “He was an

obstinate, dull man; and if the burlesque of the conduct of the senators

when the Gauls took Rome was really enacted, theatrical display must have

been cold comfort for those of his party on whom his incapacity brought

ruin.”]

[91] [Ihne[e] says “the story is absurd,” and credits it to a calumny of

his enemies. Long, however, accepts it as possible.]

[92] [See Valerius Maximus[f] and Cicero.[g] Mommsen[h] credits the

story, and Dyer[i] calls it “one of those ferocious jokes which find

their parallel only amidst the butcheries of the French Revolution.”]

[93] [“The battle of the Colline Gate was one of the few great and

decisive battles which are recorded in the history of Rome,” says

Ihne.[e] In spite of all this, he says, we know almost absolutely nothing

of the position of the armies and the progress of the fight, “and this

cannot be vouched for with any degree of confidence, as the two principal

authorities cannot be satisfactorily made to harmonise.” Appian[m] says

that each side lost 50,000; Orosius[n] sets the number at only 11,000.]

[94] [Mommsen[h] quotes the sale of an estate valued at £61,000 or

$305,000 for about £20 or $100; and rates the total proceeds of

confiscation at £3,050,000 or $15,250,000.]

[95] [Cicero[g] makes a grim pun which Guthrie Englished thus, “The same

gentlemen who knocked down estates, knocked down men.” Later he says in

the same oration that the slaughter was so great it reminded one of the

battle of Lake Trasimene when Hannibal annihilated a Roman army.]

[96] [The connection with Marius was not by blood but by marriage; Julia,

Cæsar’s aunt, was the wife of Marius.]

[Illustration]